Educated

  This is a book about a girl. A girl who struggles, fights, and grows to be an educated person. The main character Westover was born in an extremely deformed family, a family that prepares for the end of the world and considered going to school as guilty and stupid. Her father is a self-centered person who is zealous about god and believe what he did is always correct. Her mother, at the later part of the story, begin to be indulged in herbal medicine frantically and obeys her husband for 99% of the time. She fights her own way to community middle school, Harvard university, and Cambridge PHD. Two of her sibling, Taylor and Shawn, can be seen as the symbolism of two sides of her fate. Taylor is the first and oldest child to refuse joining his father’s work team and go to college. He guides Westover to conquer ACT and scholarship. On the other hand, Shawn never managed to get out of the valley. He ended up being another father and use physical threat to Westover for no reason during the process she tried to blind into the “outside” world. He is the “jealous” statue in this book, while Taylor will be the “helpful” one. They corresponds to Westover’s struggling in the entirely different world where she was raised.

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  Her parents were also two complex characters. Her father is a flat character where he stays religious, easy to be provoked, and biased parent. Her mother is the imagery saver in young Westover’s brain but this vision break as soon as she witnessed her questioning here making up of evidence of Shawn trying to kill her, just because she disobey father’s order to work in his team. Also, the hypocrisy of religion is being indirectly shown throughout the story. Her father alwasy threatened the family that the government will catch children to school, and they will even kill people, just like another family beside them. He made this as an excuse for decades until Westover went to university and found out that that family was being shot because they are part of the 3K party. The father kept denying the truth and only see what he wants to, spreading religion without another evidence, just to consolidate his authority in the family. The dark side of religion believe is being uncovered throughout the plot.