the secret history is batshit insane and i love it 📜
guess who just read tsh and can’t stop thinking about it!
THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE SECRET HISTORY!
Here is a brain dump of thoughts I had about The Secret History by Donna Tartt the morning after I finished reading it. This is basically straight from my notes app, I just added paragraph breaks and corrected some grammar, so sorry if it’s incoherent or messy. Also, I literally just read it for the first time and know very little about Donna Tartt or the context surrounding the novel so my analysis may be slightly limited. This is all a bit of fun for me.
Oh my god this book. Richard is such an unreliable narrator it’s funny. He seems so transparent at first because he tells you about Bunny’s death and his fatal flaw right from the beginning but as the book goes on you realise how many things he hides or skips over or tries to justify. You can really tell how much he cares about “the picturesque.” When he finds out about the bacchanal, he doesn’t care about the killing, only about whether there was a carnal element involved. When he finds out about Henry’s plan to kill Bunny, he simply thinks about how it will create lifelong bonds between the rest of them, he barely views it as real. When he gets shot in the end, the others don’t care as much as he thought they would, representing how insignificant his desire for beauty really is. I love how passive he is. He even recognises himself as a bystander in the story by the end. He makes so little decisions after joining the class and even at the end he takes minimal action. He lets more and more things happen to him and around him because he’s not really in control. Henry is.
Henry orchestrated everything and he manipulates Richard so well that the reader falls for it too You fall for it because he saves people: Richard from the snow, Camilla from Charles. Even though the prologue tells you it was all his plan you think he can’t be that bad. It really shouldn’t be surprising that he is. He just wants control over everything. He’s like a greater version of Richard, sharing his fatal flaw of longing for the romantic (he doesn’t want to feel “dead” as he puts it) but he’s wealthier and more in control and more active and more far gone than Richard. Perhaps it’s because of his wealth that he goes so far with his ideas. He has always gotten anything he wanted so who’s going to stop him from taking more? He even sleeps with Camilla and takes her heart in the end in the end, something Richard wants so badly. As much as Richard wants to be Henry (it seems at first) he never turns into him because he can’t afford to take the same risks as Henry. I think Richard getting shot at the end symbolises how close he was to becoming Henry if he hadn’t broken free of his control. He does everything Henry says until the end when he finally snaps at him.
Henry is to Richard what Julian is to Henry: a greater version of themself, an idol. Julian is saintly through Richard’s eyes but through Henry’s he must be even more so. Julian shares some of Henry’s qualities: disagreement with the ordinary, love for beauty. But the reason Julian is so much greater than Henry is perhaps because these ideas are not the core of him. Julian loves beauty but he doesn’t go to the same lengths as Henry to achieve romantic and dramatic ends. That’s why Julian is so loved by everyone. But Henry can’t be Julian, can’t be loved by everyone. And of course it’s Julian who discovers the one flaw in Henry’s master plan: the letter. It’s Julian who breaks Henry’s facade, without even meaning to. It’s Julian who leaves and breaks Henry. Julian leaves and Henry kills himself because his beautiful, saintly idol is now a coward in his eyes.
Henry’s death is quite perfect really. He controls practically every event in the story so of course OF COURSE he would control his own death too. Henry kills himself in the most dramatic way possible and you don’t really expect it because his death isn’t told to you from the start like Bunny’s. But Henry’s death makes sense, because he would never allow anyone else to kill him. It’s not like he wanted to die that badly, if he fought Charles to prevent him from shooting just moments before Henry’s suicide. He wanted to control his own death as much as he controlled everything else. Also, the fact that he picks up gardening is very interesting. The first person he kills is a farmer and he claims to be “collecting ferns” when he kills Bunny — he even plants these ferns in the garden, an homage to the murder hidden in plain sight. Henry’s gardening is a reminder of his murders, disguised through giving life to plants. OH AND LET’S TALK ABOUT THE SNOW. The book opens with the snow that covers Bunny’s corpse. Already it’s presented as something that conceals, something dangerous. Then Richard is almost killed by the cold, almost dies in the snow. They’re telling you that winter is this deadly thing but who saves Richard? Henry WINTER. And still you want to trust Henry because he saves Richard. There’s that scene where Francis throws berries on the ground and it looks like blood on the snow. Blood on winter. BLOOD ON WINTER’S HANDS. His last name could not be more obvious. Winter is deadly, Winter hides things. Henry controls the narrative. Richard tries to control his narrative by moving to Hampden but really it’s Henry who pulls all the strings. It’s Henry who controls Bunny’s death, arguably the most important event because it’s the first thing we learn in the book.
But why is Bunny dead from the start while Henry isn’t? Maybe it’s integral to know that Bunny will die because Richard was more involved in that death. It changes Richard more than Henry’s death because it makes Richard a murderer and Richard is the main character. Maybe it’s because Henry is not really dead in Richard’s eyes but Bunny absolutely is. Bunny is quite a tragic character because he doesn’t think he’ll die. He wants to “live forever,” but the dramatic irony is so painful. Bunny is so sad by the end of his life, once he knows he’s going to die. He’s so desperate to live. But still he goes into the woods and though he knows Henry wants to kill him, he doesn’t think it will happen then and there, with everyone else around. The thing is, though, Bunny is presented as such an unlikeable character that you almost want him to die. This is perhaps because Richard the unreliable narrator does everything to justify the murder, going into detail about every horrible thing Bunny said to them. And as much as you hate the things he says, you can’t help but feel sorry for Bunny, behind in class, left out of the bacchanal, betrayed and alone as he falls to his death. Richard doesn’t even do him the justice of going into detail about his death, just brushes over it. Even his family doesn’t seem to care that much. Also, Bunny’s and Henry’s desires are so funny and interesting. Bunny wants to “live forever” but he dies first and it’s HENRY who no one really believes is dead, it’s Henry that lives forever. Henry wants to “live without thinking” which is arguably what BUNNY has been doing his whole life, not thinking about the consequences of what he says or does. Henry kills Bunny but Bunny’s letter breaks Henry and eventually leads to his death. They’re such beautiful narrative foils.
I think by the end of the book, Charles begins to fill Bunny’s role. He becomes a foil to Henry, he argues with Henry but because Charles knows that Henry will kill him if he becomes a problem, Charles decides to kill him first. Can you blame Charles for wanting to shoot Henry? He knows what happens when someone disagrees with Henry and he doesn’t want to end up like Bunny, dead in a ravine. The slow corruption of Charles is quite tragic really. Because of his alcoholism and his need to dominate Camilla , he becomes very abusive. It’s not entirely clear when he starts hurting her but I don’t think it was from the start of the book, or it was at least uncommon at that point. There’s the scene where Camilla steps on glass in the beach and Charles can’t pull it out of her because he doesn’t want to hurt her which is in such direct contrast with him later throwing a glass at her in his anger. Maybe it’s showing the corruption of their relationship over time, how Charles turns from this sweet brother to this raging monster. Or maybe it’s a subtle way of showing the abuse that was there all along. Leaving the glass in her foot still hurts her, more than pulling it out would, so maybe it’s showing that Charles was always okay with Camilla being in pain. I think the sexual side of their relationship is really messed up but also really interesting. It shouldn’t shock you as much as it does, considering they all have murdered people which is arguably worse. But Richard’s reaction to it (which influences the reader’s) reveals a lot about his character. He is perfectly fine with the glamorous, romantic crimes like murder but he draws the line at incest. It’s still bad of course, but morally it shouldn’t be as bad as murder. I don’t really know what exactly it says about Charles and Camilla, perhaps that they were so changed by the bacchanal and by Bunny’s murder that they no longer cared about social and moral norms. I think it was also a way of Charles asserting dominance over his sister, becoming not only her protective brother but her angry lover who pulls her away from Francis and Henry and Richard.
Camilla is a very sad character because she never really gets to be a character, just an object of desire for the others. It’s represented in the bacchanal when she becomes a deer, hunted by the men around her. She is constantly filtered through Richard’s gaze, Richard who longs for beauty and turns to Camilla to provide it for him (while also probably repressing some gay feelings). Does Richard ever really know Camilla? Does he just decide to love her because she’s the only woman he respects? He doesn’t view her as some brainless bimbo like Judy or Marion. No, Camilla is different because she’s as smart as all the boys, she dresses like the boys, but she still has this feminine beauty that Richard adores so much that he only ever sees her for her beauty. He doesn’t even realise that she has sexual relationships with Henry and Charles, despite Francis thinking it was obvious, because he’s so attached to the idea that Camilla is his. Henry also has this sense of ownership over Camilla. He becomes her saviour but maybe he’s only making her feel like she needs to love him, to pay a debt to him. She becomes Henry’s dramatic lover who he kisses before he dies. Even Francis, who’s not even really attracted to her, kisses her because she’s a more attainable version of her brother. Camilla is constantly filtered through the lenses of men in her life who all seem to want to own her or take her. There’s an interesting bit at the beginning where Camilla delivers a monologue from Clytemnestra. I’m sure the mythological reference had to mean something — it’s literally a book about Classics students — but I’m struggling to figure out what it symbolises. I think maybe Charles is like Agamemnon, who is meant to love her but hurts her. And because of this, she leaves him for another man, Henry, who is like Aegisthus. But her story is the complete opposite to Clytemnestra’s, because it’s Aegisthus who ends up killing himself, dying instead of Agamemnon. Theres probably another more obvious way to interpret it that I’m not figuring out. Camilla’s ending is quite sad. She’s separated from most of the world including her brother, just taking care of her grandmother. But at least she is no longer an object of desire to be hunted by the men around her. At least she does have peace.
Francis’ ending is also sad to me. He’s a gay man forced to marry a woman he hates, who tries to kill himself because of it. It’s good that he doesn’t end up dying but I do feel sorry for him. I like Francis the most by the end of the book but I really can’t figure out what his character really is. I’m drawn to him and yet I can’t exactly describe any definitive traits that he has. Maybe he’s meant to be a character who never truly gets love. He loves Charles and Charles settles for him when he’s drunk enough, but ultimately Francis is just a plaything to Charles. He loves Richard but Richard loves Camilla more or at least represses his feelings for Francis enough to believe this. Similarly to Camilla, Francis is an object for the others to play with from time to time but they don’t love him as much as he loves them. The only reason Francis doesn’t become the same sort of object of desire as Camilla is perhaps because he’s a man.
I think I’ve unintentionally created three sets of parallel characters in my head: Camilla is what Francis could’ve been; Bunny is what Charles could’ve been; Henry is what Richard could’ve been.