Educated: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

At eleven, Tara longs to get away from the junkyard, but she is too young to get a job like her older sister. Still, she goes into town and visits the local gas station owned by a kindly couple named Papa Jay and Myrna Moyle, asking if she can put up flyers advertising her babysitting services. Tara begins babysitting for Jay and Myrna’s daughter Mary, and some of Mary’s friends, too. Through her new network of friends in town, Tara gets another small job packing boxes for a man who owns a nut business. 

When Tara overhears Mary playing piano one Sunday in church, she asks if Mary can pay her for babysitting in piano lessons rather than money. Mary tries to ask Tara about whether she goes to school or has any friends, but Tara is quiet and deflects the questions. Mary suggests Tara attend dance classes, which her sister Caroline teaches every Wednesday at the back of Papa Jay’s.

Tara shows up to her first dance class in a huge gray T-shirt and steel-toed boots. She struggles to keep up with the other girls, who wear leotards and tights, know the popular music Caroline plays in class, and the dance steps she teaches. After class, when Caroline suggests Tara get a leotard for the next class, Tara tells her teacher that leotards aren’t “modest.” Caroline volunteers to talk to Tara’s mother for her. A few days later, Mother takes Tara to a dancewear shop over forty miles away and helps her pick out a leotard and some dance shoes, but urges Tara to keep them in her room—hidden away from Dad.

Tara grows to love dance class, even though the other girls rarely speak to her—and even though she feels exposed by the “immodest” dance uniform. When rehearsals for the Christmas recital begin, Caroline consults specially with Tara’s mother about what kind of costume Tara will be allowed to wear. When Tara arrives at class for her costume fitting later that week, she finds that Caroline has made the costumes for their class’s number large gray sweatshirts that hang to the knees in order to accommodate Tara. 

The night of the recital—held at the Westovers’ church—Mother and Tara finally tell Dad about Tara’s dance lessons. He grimaces, but agrees to go watch the recital. After Tara’s class’s number, on the drive home, Dad is “furious”—and as he rants on and on, Mother, too, begins a diatribe against the “obscene” costumes Caroline picked out for the girls. Tara knows that her mother is lying to Dad. Even after they arrive home, Dad continues talking about how Caroline’s class is just another one of “Satan’s deceptions.”

Hoping to ease the blow of Tara’s being banned from dance classes, Mother helps her find a new hobby—Tara begins taking voice lessons, and her teacher helps her get ready to sing in church for all to hear. After Tara’s big performance, the whole congregation congratulates her, and the choir director and bishop clamor to ask Tara to sing at upcoming church events. Dad is proud and beaming, and from that moment on, he longs for Tara’s “voice to be heard.” When Tara’s voice teacher tells her family that the theater in town is putting on a production of Annie, Dad even puts aside his qualms about “socialists” and “Satan’s deceptions” and urges Mother to do whatever it takes to make sure Tara is cast as the lead.