Unknown Story
Storyboard Text
- The first time I saw King's College, Cambridge, I didn't think I was dreaming, but only because my imagination had never produced anything so grand. My eyes settled on a clock tower with stone carvings. There was a lake of perfectly clipped gras and, across the lake, an ivory- tinted building I vaguely recognized as Greco-Roman. But it was the Gothic chapel, three hundred feet long and a hundred feet high, a stone mountain, that dominated the scene. (pg 235)
- Dad's eyes were fixed on me. It was the gaze of a seer, of a holy oracle whose power and authority were drawn from the very universe. I wanted to mee it head-on, to prove I could withstand its weight, but after a few seconds something in me buckled, some inner force gave way, and my eyes dropped to the floor. (pg 303)
- He said again there was an evil presence in my room, that he couldn't stay another night. Their flight was not until morning, but Dad said it was better to sleep on a bench than with the devil. My mother bustled about the room, shoveling shirts and socks into their suitcse. Five minutes later, they were gone. (pg 305)
- We could have cured Grandma, too. But she turned away from Christ. She lacked faith and that's why she's dead. God won't heal the faithless... Grandma's sin was serious. But your sins are more serious still, because you were give nth truth and have turned from it.
- I love you. But I can't I'm sorry, Dad.
- Now I thought about it, I realized that all my siblings, except Richard and Tyler, were economically dependent on my parents. My family was splitting down the middle- the three who had left the mountain, and the four who had stayed. The three with doctarates, and four without high school diplomas. A chasm had appeared, and was growing. (pg 326)
- The funeral was the next day...[I] watched my siblings trickle in. (pg 325)
- Tara wins a scholarship to Cambridge in England and right off the bat writes an essay that suprises even the professors. Tara would often go home and visit her family again but the more and more she does the more of the chaos she sees again and how truly divided her family is. Her father would argue with her mother. They would argue with her as well. School was also a type of escape for Tara. It's a place she can be away from her past.
- Tara's parents come to Tara's dorm when she starts to study at Harvard to give her one last chance at coming back to her family and embracing once again the life that she once had. Tara's father says that she has been far from God and therefore she is turning evil. When he brings oil to bless her daughter, she hesitantly refuses. This marks the end of her ties with her parents at a relationship level. Tara refuses to go back to an abusive and dangerous life.
- Every night for a month, when I came in from the junkyard, I'd spend an hour scrubbing grim from my hari and clumsily apply makeup. I'd rub handfuls of lotion into the pads of my fingers to soften the calluses, just in case that was the night Charles touched them. When he finally did, it was early evening and we were in his jeep, driving to his house to watch a movie. (pg 172)
- For the rest of the afternoon- for the rest of the summer- I was N*****. I'd answered to it a thousand times before with indifference. If anything, I'd been amused and thought Shawn was clever. Now it made me want to gag him. Or sit him down with a history book... (pg 180)
- The last time that Tara formally sees her family together is on their grandmother's funeral. There all of Tara's siblings come to the service. Here she realizes how the family was divided, those who wanted a different life and one for themselves, and those who lived for their parents. Tara left the mountain and made a living and title for herself. Half of her siblings hate her. Tyler, Richard, and Luke are the main ones who have supported her through this whole memoir. This is a story of growing up andlove learning. Through her experiences, she is EDUCATED.
- Our N*****'s back!... You've got black all over your face, like a n*****!
- Don't call me that! You don't know what it means!!
- Tara Westover starts a new life outside of her familiy's wing in her new university, BSU. After she passed the exam she left with her mother. Tara's father didn't sit well with his daughter leaving home and running off with the Illuminatti and the evil socialist world that he had tried so hard to push her away from. In the new university, Tara doesn't feel at home. She feel's alienated. She's too young. She learned all her reading and writing from the Book of Mormon, and a part of her sees the world like her father does. Slowly but surely, she starts to gain confidence in herself and others.
- On New Year's Eve, Mother drove me to my new life. I didn't take much with me: a dozen jars of home-canned peaches, bedding, and a garbage bag full of clothes... The university was nestled in the heart of the Wasatch Mountains, whose white massifs jutted mightily out of the earth... My apartment was a mile south of campus...I lived alone in the quiet apartment for three days. Execpt it wasn't quiet. Nowhere was quiet. (pg 153)
- [He] rested his hand on mine. His hand was warm and I wanted to take it, but instead I jerked away as if I'd been burned...I couldn't let him near me- not that night, and not any night for months- without shuddering as that work, my word, ripped its way into remembrance. Whore. (pg 173)
- Charles was from the outside world. As in, he did go to school and he did go to the doctor for check ups. Tara's father always had his suspisions about Charles but it never seemed to be true. Charles just seemed like a good guy. Tara starts to have feelings for him but she subconsciencly doesn't want him near her. Her childhood comes back more and more. The world WHORE haunts Tara. It's what she was taught not to be and her father would go to extremes so that she wouldn't be so. Even to the point when she would hate being a women. To the point that she is ashamed and cautious of everything she does.
- The word and the way Shawn said it hadn't changed; only my ears were different. They no longer heard the jingle of a joke in it. What they heard was a signal, a call through time, which was answered with a mounting conviction: that never gain would I allow myself be made a foot soldier in a conflict I did not understand. (pg 181)
- All her life, Tara has been disconnected from the world because of her parents, mainly her father. As a result, Tara was geuinely unaware of a lot of topics like racism, the holocaust, or even what the n word really meant. Now that she goes to school and is educated on some level, she now understands and is horrified at the depth of these words and the way that they were so casually used. Tara is starting to look at her life though a new lens.
Over 30 Million Storyboards Created