Without society, in the mountains, with a conspiracy theorist father, Tara Westover certainly grew up in an unusual way. Tara’s, at times violent, family, at times violent, was often described as devoutly religious and paranoid at several points in the book. In the memoir Educated, Tara Westover maintains a consistent theme of control throughout the book to illustrate the grip her father held over her family. This element of control is clear straight from the get-go. In Chapter One, the father tells his kids a story about a family just like them that was murdered for not going to school. That scares Tara so much that she claims it to be her “strongest memory” (Westover 1). This same scary story is again brought up later in the