Educated By Tara Westover Analysis

Freedom comes at a cost, some take the risk, others are too scared to explore beyond their boundaries due to fear of failure. In the memoir Educated by Tara Westover, Tara is brainwashed by her family's beliefs and values of surviving in life. As Tara was raised in Buck’s Peak, a remote part of Idaho, she believed everything her father and mother told her about how to do and deal with things in life. Finally, one day Tara out of curiosity decides to want an education and breaks free of her family's chains by going on a rigorous journey of education. Now Tara is being mentally challenged as she learns about the truths of the world and tries to keep this new lifestyle while her family and her past are knocking at her door trying to get her to

Tyler being in Tara’s position before gives her a piece of advice saying, “...as long as you live under Dad’s roof, it's going to be hard to go when he asks you not go...” (Westover 120). This conversation with Tyler helps Tara to think more about her well being and to find out more about life. Tara does not believe in herself at first but then realizes that the conflict within her will not go away unless she goes to college. Once Tara arrives at BYU, she is immediately conflicted by the lifestyle of her roommates and feels out of place. She is shocked by their lifestyle because she is reminded of what her father said about people who did not live like them; as time goes by Tara starts to realize that her father is wrong throughout her experiences at school. One day in her psychology class someone had mentioned Ruby Ridge which sounded familiar to Tara, so she read about the story after class and found out this is what her father had mentioned to her repeatedly in her life. After finding out the truth behind the Weavers, Tara realized that the story “...passed through his feverish brain, it had ceased to be a story about someone else and had become a story about him...” (Westover 210.) At that point Tara became obsessed with bipolar disorder and studied it more in class. As she continued to learn more, she started piecing together everything her father had told her and realized how they were all crazy delusions that had come from his