Madison Mathews
Distinguishing the singular cause of a tragedy is not an easy feat. In Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History, it is difficult to determine exactly what incited the murders that take place. When examining what put the events of the narrative into motion, it is critical to return to the initial interactions of the group as a whole. Specifically, inspecting the first of Julian’s lectures that Richard attends is key to understanding the mindsets of the individual characters throughout the story. The chosen passage, an excerpt from the aforementioned lecture, introduces the notion of equating beauty to terror, which Julian suggests, Henry adopts, and the class misinterprets, all of which lead to the group’s murderous acts throughout the novel.
All of the characters in the novel have strange, mildly deluded world views. Through their interactions with the material in Julian’s Classics class, the reader is able to learn about each of their unique perspectives. Henry’s comments during Richard’s first lecture of Julian’s are crucial to the analysis of Henry’s character, as they are a perfect example of the way he views the world. Henry responds to Julian’s question by quoting Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher. He easily understands the point that Julian is trying to make in his lecture and adds that “objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art” (Tartt 39). This action supports Henry’s intelligence, as it highlights his familiarity with the Poetics, but it also introduces a central theme of the novel. At this point in the lesson, the conversation is focused on the equation of beauty with terror in an artistic sense, as the class examines this notion through the lens of mythology. As the novel progresses, however, the group, led by Henry, transitions this idea from a simple observation about art to an entire lifestyle. They become obsessed with recreating this sort of obscene, alarming beauty in their real lives and will do nearly anything to experience it. In fact, they even imagine their real lives as a sort of art piece to support the morbid actions they take. When describing Bunny’s murder, Richard says that “it is impossible to slow down this film, to examine individual frames… the film flaps up in the projector and the screen goes black” (276). Through Richard’s picturesque description of a horrific incident, the death of one of his friends, the audience can truly see how the group has adopted the mindset of “beauty is terror” (39) in relation to their real lives, not just in an artistic sense. The characters see their lives as an art piece, like they are characters in a myth, and only notice the beauty in their terrifying actions. This adopted mindset of theirs seems to be inspired by Henry, who is by far the closest with Julian and the pupil that takes his teachings most seriously. This passage is the first glimpse the audience receives of the deranged mindset the group embraces, brought about by Henry’s comments in class.
To attribute the madness of the students’ mindsets to Julian alone would be an oversimplification. However, it is apparent that Julian’s teachings affect all of the characters’ outlooks significantly, another important point that this excerpt addresses. By constantly emphasizing the fact that “the Greeks, you know, really weren’t very different from us” (Tartt 40), Julian only feeds into his students’ fantasies. In this passage specifically, Julian mentions a plethora of Classical allusions involving death that he finds to be particularly striking and beautiful. He describes historical deaths like those of Agamemnon and Caesar. Both stories are clear examples of foreshadowing, as both men are murdered by those close to him, just as Bunny is later in the novel. He also mentions the death of Dido, who committed suicide out of desperation, similar to Henry. These allusions also illustrate that he supports the aforementioned idea that painful objects can be beautiful when viewed through an artistic lens. While it may be an exaggeration to suggest that Julian contributes to the misconception of this notion by the group of Classics students, it is clear that he does nothing to discourage the actions they take because of this lesson of his. When Henry asks Julian for guidance concerning the bacchanal, Julian only tells him that he should “do what is necessary” (71). In this lecture specifically, Julian practically encourages the students to attempt to have a bacchanal through quotes like “what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To be absolutely free!” (42). Julian directly relates the students to the Greeks, feeding into their delusion that they are simply characters in an art piece, then emphasizes the beauty and freedom of Dionysian ritual.
Julian intentionally creates vulnerable students that are easy for him to influence by hand-picking individuals with no parental guidance and cutting them off from the rest of Hampden College. Throughout the novel, the characters view him as saintly and naïve, but in reality, their actions are being manipulated by his lectures. Taken to an extreme, it can even be stated that Julian is involved in the murders on a psychological level. This interpretation of the momentum behind the group’s actions is important, because it changes the moral standings of the characters in the novel. Instead of Julian falling victim to the tragedy that is his students murdering each other, the truth is that the students are the victims of Julian’s immortal classroom experiment. This particular segment of the text is important because it is the first moment that the readers witness the effect of Julian’s lectures on his pupils and their actions, as foreshadowed by Julian’s allusions. While Henry is the leader of the group, his ideologies are directly developed by Julian, making him the true catalyst for the bacchanal and the subsequent events. Regardless of the division of individual blame, it is indisputable that this one of Julian’s lectures, and the introduction of the relationship between beauty and terror, serves as momentum for the sequence of events in the narrative, specifically the murders.
