Genre 4: Informative Genre
This genre seeks to explore the reasons why individuals stay in cults and the reasons why individuals leave cults. This infographic is rooted in information gained from the scholarly article, "Cult Membership: What Factors Contribute to Joining or Leaving?". While Tara's family is not a cult by definition, their characteristics and family dynamics reflect that of a cult: tenacity to beliefs, close relationships, a powerful leader, and ostracization of those whose beliefs are different than their own. These statistics out of 100 cult members, represented in the graphs below, are particularly relevant to a study of Educated as Tara's decision to estrange herself from her family was a complicated decision and her family suffers from mental illness, although this is undiagnosed. While Tara does not experience a spike in anxiety after her estrangement from her family, her family's mood disorders are prevalent in the novel as demonstrated through father's likely bipolar disorder and her bother's traumatic brain injury that causes violent tendencies and a changed personality.