Henry Murphy
Is there such a thing as “the fatal flaw,” a showy dark crack running down the faces of narrators in literature? In Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Richard Papen’s flaw is that narrators are never purely objective. He narrates the entirety of the book, and after starting by admitting that he helped murder someone, Richard recalls the events that transpired years after everything happened. Though he tries to maintain a guise of objectivity and perfect memory, nobody is perfect. As a result, certain memories or events might be slightly twisted. When speaking for other characters, Richard might confuse past events with more recent information and will speak through them instead. Using clever word choice and speaking through Professor Julian, Richard details his mistake of trying to become perfect by murdering Bunny and hints that Francis may be important to the murder being exposed.
The overall passage serves as a warning about neglecting the imperfections of one’s being, but Julian uses subtle wording changes and choices to highlight the importance of what he’s saying. For instance, when he mentions that “it’s a temptation for any intelligent person, and especially for perfectionists” (40-41) to want to do something, his students, and the reader by some extension, are immediately drawn to agree with the sentiment because they are also intelligent and potentially perfectionist people. This is furthered by the temptation to “murder the primitive, emotive, appetitive self” (41), with the negative adjectives (primitive, appetitive) serving to bolster the sentiment that this is a good thing. However, Julian then immediately claims that this is a mistake, and this is a subtle shock to the reader. His word choice up until this point was effectively suckering the reader into blindly agreeing with everything he was saying, only to be hit with the fact that this is the wrong way to think. Julian elaborates on his reasoning in the latter half of the passage, but what is more interesting to consider is how he rephrases the irrational/imperfective self. In the opening line, Julian talks about the “murder” of the imperfect, which involves direct acknowledgment of the imperfections and a willingness to rid oneself of them. The second time, he warns against “ignor[ing] the existence of the irrational” (41), which has a completely different connotation. Knowing something exists and wanting to remove it is a moderately mature, if not primitive, sentiment, but refusing to acknowledge that something even exists is much more puerile. If the first statement was to sucker us into the warning, the second statement serves to reinforce our belief in the warning. Of course, it’s a mistake to completely ignore the existence of imperfections, I would never be so dumb! By contrasting two statements of the same idea, Julian is better able to communicate the idea that ignoring imperfections is a mistake.
This specific part of Julian’s lecture highlights the need to be cognizant of the imperfect self, but it also serves to highlight Richard’s guilt in the murder of Bunny. When reading the immediately preceding and following paragraphs, it becomes apparent that this passage is a bit of a tonal non sequitur. The immediately preceding paragraphs talk about the Greeks losing control and the idea that “all truly civilized people… have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self” (40), while the following examples tell of Tiberius cracking under the pressure of being emperor and the Romans’ fear of Christianity. These two sets of examples generally about losing control sandwich a very direct warning, which suggests there is a very specific reason for its inclusion. We get a better picture of why this might be when we consider that this book is narrated to us by Richard. We are told this story long after it occurred, so Richard is free to twist the tale to better suit what he remembers. When combined with the tonal shift of this passage, it implies that there is a very specific reason why he remembers these lines from Julian. Richard was involved in a murder, so this can best be seen as him admitting to why he did it. We largely know who killed Bunny, as well as how, but we never learned why in the prologue. Now that we know a few things about Bunny, that he’s very loud, expressive, and not the most thoughtful, and how strongly that contrasts against the more reserved nature of Henry, Francis, and Richard, the motive comes into context. We can infer that Bunny represents this more primitive, emotive, appetitive self in the “person” that is the Greek class, and it follows that the more reserved rest of the group might be tempted to murder this imperfect part.
With these inferences in mind, we can make some predictions about the general story progression from here out. We know Bunny is imperfect, and this passage strongly suggests that the more perfect among the group may try to purge Bunny for being who he is. Furthermore, we can better understand why Richard gets involved, being so new to the group. Julian mentions that “The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed” (41), and the more that person will try to remove imperfections. The repetition of “the more” is important, because thus far, we have only seen Richard changing as a person. If anyone in the book were to become more of anything, it would be Richard. We also see that in his trying to emulate the other members of the Greek class, Richard is adopting part of their more secluded personalities and manner of dress into his own life while hiding his past and who he really is, becoming more cultivated and repressed in the process. By Julian’s logic and Richard’s hinted admission of guilt, this changing personality will lead Richard to find some need to “[channel] the primitive impulses” that he is working to hide. By continuing to read closely, we can see Richard potentially makes another slip in this passage, though it is a bit harder to tell. In the prologue, when describing the events leading up to Bunny’s murder, he is surprised to find “the four of us waiting for him” (4) at the top of Cataract Mountain. This is interesting because there are six students in the Greek class: Richard, Henry, Francis, Charles, Camilla, and Bunny. Bunny is murdered and there are four murderers, which means one person was not involved. Looking once again at our passage, who is the only other character that speaks? Francis, when he asks “Why?” (41). On the surface, this could be him asking Julian for more clarification; in the context of Richard’s narration, however, this could be seen as Francis asking why they killed Bunny, with Richard’s best answer being the latter half of Julian’s quote.
For you, for me, any
Body chasing “perfect”,
We want to murder the
Imperfect, I’d expect.
Be not the fool who tries
To follow this great lie;
Look inside and you’ll see,
For you or even me,
Murder is not correct!
When we try to ignore
That which is imperfect,
Shoving it in a drawer,
Those flaws will resurrect
Without your intellect
To keep them on a leash.