Educated by Tara Westover Literary Analysis Essay

Tara Westover’s Educated is a story of a girl seeking her true calling in life while facing many family issues along the way. One of the struggles Tara faced was domestic abuse from her eldest brother, Shawn, who would physically and mentally attack her. The story represents how domestic violence is often an overlooked topic, whether it is parents’ looking over the situation or a lack of belief. The abuse did lead Tara to seek a way to leave home and gain an education, which led her to have a successful life, but with emotional damage. Westover is an example of how often domestic violence situations with siblings are often seen as just sibling bickering instead of an actual problem and how it leaves emotional damage along the way. 

In fact, Tara and Shawn’s relationship is often seen as siblings being siblings, bickering and arguing. However, the actual interaction between the two is one-sided, often inflicting fear and asserting a type of domination over the other. An example of this is when Tara comes home for Thanksgiving and Shawn attacks Tara for standing up for herself, “I don’t know how he got me to the floor, but again I was on my back and he was on top of me… My wrist was folded, my arms twisted behind my back” (Westover 188). In response, the mother turned a blind eye to the situation, perciving it as roughhousing. On multiple occasions the parents do not intervene, from weapons being pulled to physical manners, Tara’s parents never see it as abuse. Audry, the sister of Tara and Shawn, experianced the same abuse; however, she explains why she stayed quiet and never stood up: “When my own mother didn’t believe me I stopped believing myself” (Westover 269). Tara believed she was all alone, that her family would not believe her when she would tell them about the years of abuse Shawn caused, and she was right. The family kicked Tara out of the family because they felt that she was trying to ruin his life and that she was being dramatic over the situation, stating that it was just sibling rivalry. 

However, it is not just a sibling rivalry, it is abuse. Sibling violence is seen to be the physical or emotional fighting of one sibling by the other, not the everyday squabbles but actual violence.  According to the HAWC, Healing Abuse Working for Change, “just under one-half of children under 18 are involved in sibling abuse, which can range from pushing and shoving to using weapons, threats, and pervasive psychological intrusion to make one sibling feel powerless and humiliated” (Libertin 2). Libertin explains that sibling abuse is in nearly half of households and goes unnoticed. It leads to psychological defeat and the encouragement of abuse to continue when no one steps in. Libertin also states that the trigger for this thing is often when the household is large, there is no emotion coming from the parents, parents pick favorites, and many more examples (5). These all occurred in the house, where the parents were emotionally unavailable and the household was large with no way to leave. There are three ways one can notice domestic violence with siblings: perception, intent, and severity (Learning Network 4). As the reader can pick up on, Tara's parents refused to see the signs. Tara was experiencing domestic violence because the family denial as well as their lack of knowledge about domestic abuse.  

Nonetheless, Tara escaped the abuse. She used her admiration for education to lead her to a better lifestyle, one where she wouldn’t fear for her life. Tara explains how change could be called many things “You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education” (Westover 329). She views education as the change she needed to escape the mountain and the drama that came with it. Tara chose to take a different path from others in her family allowing her to escape the mental strain it caused and the physical pain seen. 

In conclusion, Tara suffered from living in a home of domestic violence that occurred with her brother Shawn. She used education as a gateway to escape the violence and her at-home dramas. This led to her success but left her with no true family as they felt her pain was dramatized. Her success is driven by her reasons to leave the mountain and the drive for a normal life. Often people experience the same as Tara, her story is an inspiration to those who may experience the same trama as her, and hopefully leads to others getting the help they need.