Educated: Chapter 38 Summary & Analysis

Tara is failing her PhD, but cannot find the words to explain to her supervisor, Dr. Runciman, the truth of what’s happening to her. In a meeting, Runciman suggests Tara quit if she can’t keep up with the program’s demands—she hasn’t sent him any work in over a year. Tara leaves the meeting and returns to her dorm room to binge-watch episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That fall, Tyler calls Tara to tell her that his efforts to get Mother and Dad to try to confront Shawn have failed. Dad has threatened to “disown” Tyler if he presses the Shawn issue any further. More than that, Shawn has called Tyler and threatened to get him kicked out of the family “in two minutes”—and advised him to “just ask Tara” if he needs any proof of Shawn’s power. As Tara half-listens to Tyler, unable to pull herself away from Buffy, she realizes that he is going to pick their family over her just like Audrey. 

In October, Tara gets an email containing a letter from Tyler and Stefanie. Tyler tells her that he is forwarding a copy of it to their parents. Tara is afraid to read the email further, knowing that it will contain a rant against her. When Tara forces herself to read on, however, she sees that Tyler and his wife are choosing to condemn Mother and Dad and their “chains of abuse, manipulation, and control.” Grateful for the support of her brother and his wife, Tara begins finding the strength to better herself. She enrolls in university counseling, and spends more and more time on the phone with Tyler and Stefanie, talking through her problems with them. She feels guilty about having torn apart Tyler’s relationship with their parents, but grateful to him for pulling her upward “just as [she] had decided to stop kicking and sink.”

It takes Tara many months to function normally, but by the end of the following summer, she is able to focus on her studies again. She decides to complete academic research on the nature of family and familial obligation. She realizes that this topic will become her dissertation—a year later, she has a completed piece of work on “The Family, Morality, and Social Science in Anglo-American Cooperative Thought, 1813-1890.” When she shows the paper to Dr. Runciman, he is deeply impressed, and tells Tara he’ll be surprised if she doesn’t earn her doctorate after all. 

That September, Tara submits her dissertation for review. After a defense in December, she is awarded her PhD in January and becomes Dr. Westover. She is living in London with Drew and has a happy life—but something is missing. She knows that it is time to go home to Buck’s Peak and at last reclaim some of her and her family’s “shared history.”