In Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, she reveals the story of her childhood with a not-so-normal family. The Westover family is very religious and perceives the rest of the world as the devil’s playhouse. Her father is the main perpetrator for these beliefs. He is the one who holds back Tara for the majority of her life. Throughout the book, she realizes that her father is not a caring man she should look up to.

Tara develops this thought when her father comes home with a new machine that he calls a Shear. She describes this as “the most frightening machine” (138) she has ever seen. Tara gives the Shear animal-like behaviors such as how it had jaws and would throw Shawn around “as if he were a child” (141). When Tara writes this imagery, it gives the readers a clear vision of the situation. The reader can see how the machine makes Shawn move around as if he were the Shear’s playtoy. Tara also describes the Shear having “chomping blades” (138) which gives a picture of these terrifying, sharp blades, chomping down on whatever is in its way.

Tara says “[d]ad has dreamed up many schemes over the years, but this was the first that really shocked me” (138). She is finally seeing what the readers have been seeing since the beginning, that her father does not care what happens to his children as long as the job gets done and is done quickly. As the readers, we first saw this behavior when Tara’s father asked her to climb into a bin that contained large, sharp pieces of metal that was to be dumped out. Her leg was stuck under a piece of metal which made her unable to climb out before her father dumped the bin out which caused her to fall ten feet. 

After she fell, her father seemed to not have remorse and did not blink an eye. Tara recalls this situation by writing“ ‘How’d you manage that?’ Dad said. His tone was sympathetuc but dissapointed” (65). These events show just how unsympathetic and dangerous he is to his own children. All he cares about is getting the work done. 

Works Cited

Westover, Tara. Educated. Random, 2018.