POV

 

After reading and discussing the first 150 or so pages of Educated by Tara Westover, I’ve been thinking a lot about the significance of Tara’s point of view. Unlike other stories, the story of her childhood would be extremely different coming from the eyes of any other family member. I say this because Tara doesn’t necessarily narrate her childhood adoringly, she remembers most of it in a negative light. For example, Tara’s view of how suffocating and harsh her family’s practice of religion was, would probably be described from her father’s point of view as devoted and proud. Also, Tara’s guilt and hopefulness of going to college may be seen as betrayal from her siblings. So in reality, we will never know if events actually occurred the way they are described in the book or not. Tara even recognizes this herself. At the bottom of a few of the pages, she leaves little footnotes warning us that this was just her recollection of how the event occurred, and that her siblings each had significantly different memories. 

At first, I thought Tara’s dad was the villain of her story. But after realizing that viewpoints are critical, I’ve realized that he may have just been doing what he thought was right for his family. Maybe he genuinely thought the Feds were going to hurt them and was trying to protect Tara and her siblings. Maybe he had completely lucid feelings that the End of the World was coming. Maybe he was schizophrenic or had another mental disorder that caused this paranoia. Or maybe not. He may have been intentionally trying to chain his family to his religion and harm his kids, but we will never know. All we know is Tara’s own perspective of her childhood.