Vallerie Tran
Can you ever outrun your past completely? Or has it already ingrained itself intrinsically into who you are? The Secret History by Donna Tartt is known as the first work of literature to explicitly embody the dark academia aesthetic: a subculture obsessed with the pursuit of higher education, the classics, and a gruesome fascination of beauty. In Chapter 1, Richard provides insightful details into the dull realities of his previous life and his disdain for his past which is starkly contrasted with the glamorized Hollywood version he skillfully fabricates for his classmates and mentor at Hampden College. The olfactory imagery, repetition, and graphic descriptions of death establish Richard Papen’s disillusionment with his childhood home and juxtapose the embellished lies he invents as his reality with the unremarkable truth. His insecurity about his humble beginnings is the driving force behind his actions at Hampden and become a way for others to manipulate him for their own means.
A notable moment in the passage is when Richard reveals his sentiments plainly about his hometown Plano, California: showing the disparity between his seemingly indifferent attitude towards his old life and the deep-seated resentment he actually feels. In the beginning, Richard invokes the word “miasma” meaning “noxious vapor” to describe the smell of rotting fruit which he attributes to his childhood hometown Plano, California (Oxford English Dictionary). The olfactory imagery of rot brings forth unpleasant thoughts of decay, but the description of “the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes” specifically calls forth smells that are sickly sweet and nauseating (Tartt, 10). Ripe fruits are generally a symbol of vitality and health, but this grotesque description of rotting fruit signifies that Richard believes his hometown can suffocate even the most lively things. There is a part of him that believes no matter how far away he runs, the miasma of this town will continue to cling onto him. This fear led to his fantastical descriptions of his past consisting of “orange groves, failed movie stars, lamplit cocktail hours by the swimming pool, cigarettes, ennui” for his peers and mentors at Hampden College (Tartt, 28). These lies serve to not only create an illusion for his classmates but to alleviate his insecurities and feed his obsession with “a colorful past” (Tartt, 7). In order to compensate for his perceived shortcomings, he instead fabricates an imaginary world where his beginnings are interesting and mirrors aspects of his classmates’ upbringings to relate to them.
A reason behind his insecurities can be seen through his description of his perspective on the quality of life in Plano. The jarring diction of “hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death,” normally attributed to machinery, reduces his life to a cruel cycle of life and death without purpose (Tartt, 10). The stylistic choice to use “and” between life, copulation, and death slows down the phrase, mimicking his life being leached away slowly until his sense of self withers away. Part of Richard’s fascination with the Greek class was because of the exclusivity and mystery due to the small elite group of students that were handpicked by Julian himself. Richard desperately wants to be a part of this group in order to be special, which is the opposite of what he felt in Plano. It is clearly established in the first paragraph of the first chapter that Richard has “a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs” (Tartt, 7). Richard tries to escape this feeling of being ordinary by moving to Hampden, on the opposite side of the country, but his constant need to be validated by those who he deems interesting causes him to fall prey to the schemings of his classmates and his enigmatic professor in fatal ways.
Through the narrator’s detailed descriptions of his hometown, readers understand Richard’s perspective on his upbringing and how these perceived shortcomings drive him to invent false fantasies of the Golden West for his wealthy classmates. By looking at his past, Richard’s actions can be understood as a way to outrun his past and create a life that he deems “picturesque”. But what he doesn’t realize until it is much too late, is that by overcompensating for his past, he is letting his insecurities control his mentality and actions as well. His fatal flaw of romanticizing people and places allows for his classmates and professor to take advantage of him at the expense of his integrity until his moral compass no longer guides him in the right direction. By living in a false reality, Richard is unable to discern fact from fiction to the extent that he ignores the faults of people he idolizes and always puts them in the best light. Richard allows himself to be manipulated by those who do not have his best interest at heart but instead use him to achieve their own means.
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