Educated: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Tara is cast as the lead in Annie during the summer of 1999—the summer Dad is in “serious preparedness mode” for the upcoming Y2K catastrophe, which he believes will cause all of the computer systems to fail, sinking the world into chaos and “usher[ing] in the Second Coming of Christ.” At the Westover home, everyone works round-the-clock canning fruit to hoard in the family’s emergency cellar. One afternoon, Tara watches as her dad uses the forklift to lower a thousand-gallon tank of gasoline into a giant pit in the yard and bury it with nettles and thistle, so that they can drive at the end of the world “when everyone else is hotfooting it.”

At play rehearsals in town, Tara gets to enter “another world”—no one there is talking about Y2K. Tara is relieved, but also uncertain of how to behave—she has never learned to talk to “people who went to school and visited the doctor” and spent their days doing things other than preparing for end times. Tara doesn’t recognize cultural references in the script, such as a line about President Roosevelt or “FDR.” When the director tells the cast they’ll need to provide their own costumes, Tara’s heart sinks as she realizes she doesn’t have a pretty dress to wear in the second act. Mother takes Tara to her sister Angie’s house, and Angie lets Tara borrow one of her own daughter’s dresses. On opening night, Dad is in the front row, and he comes to every single performance until closing.

Tara continues taking part in the plays in town, though she occasionally has to field Dad’s comments about the theater being “a den of adulterers and fornicators.” Dad drives Tara to rehearsal every night, wanting her to have the chance to sing and make him proud, but also threatens to take her out of each play she participates in. One winter, when Tara’s tonsils swell, Dad worries her singing will be affected, and urges her to undertake “treatment”—by standing out in the sun with her mouth open and letting the sun heal her throat. 

One night, Tara meets a new boy at play rehearsal—though he’s not in the cast, he has many friends who are. Tara is immediately entranced by the boy, whose name is Charles, and he is similarly taken with her. He tells Tara that her singing is the best he has heard in his life. That night, Tara gets home from play rehearsal to find Dad and Richard hunched over a large metal box on the kitchen table, assembling something. When it’s done, Dad shows Tara what they’ve built: it is a fifty-caliber rifle, which he’s bought for what he’ll only call “defense.”

The next night at rehearsal, Tara flirts with Charles, and he urges her to come to his school’s choir practices, even though she isn’t a student. As Tara imagines spending time with Charles at his house, playing games or watching a movie, she gets excited—but when she imagines bringing him to her house at Buck’s Peak, she feels only panic at the thought he might find the root cellar, or the buried fuel tank, or the fifty-caliber rifle.

On New Year’s Eve, after weeks of intense preparations, Dad studies the Bible and then sits down in front of the TV to watch The Honeymooners and wait for “The End.” At 11:59 p.m., Tara, sitting in the living room with him, holds her breath, but as the clock strikes midnight, nothing happens. Dad remains immobile on the couch as the minutes tick by. At 1:30 a.m., Tara at last heads to bed, leaving her father sitting up alone watching TV. The next morning, Tara’s father seems “smaller” to her—she can see the “childlike” disappointment in his features as he reckons with the fact that the world has continued spinning on.