Nathan Nichols
Halfway through Chapter 2 of “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt, Richard Papen reflects on the nature of his early memories at Hampden College. In doing so, he reveals a climax at which he finally comes to understand his place within the group of Greek students learning under Julian. As his memories shifted from distant and blurry to clear and bright, he began to realize that the other students had felt the same puzzled fascination as he did with them from the start and that their unapproachable air was simply a reflection of how they perceived Richard to think. Through Richard’s self-reflective, yet simultaneously alien perspective of himself, he humbles the other Greek students while refining his position higher up on the social ladder.
One of the key understandings through which this relationship is viewed is Richard’s outward appearance, as it’s perceived by the other students. By painting himself in a negative light, Richard subtly encourages forgiveness from Julian’s students and reshapes the perception of how they treat Richard. At the beginning of the passage, he remarks on himself and the impression that he gives off – an impression he is now aware of, narrating retroactively at a more mature age. He starts by explaining that people have always interpreted his shyness as “sullenness, snobbery, bad temper” (Tartt 80), words that conjure intensive Dark Academia imagery and project Richard as the kind of secluded, loose cannon that would be so engaging to the eccentric Greek students at Hampden. He continues with a quote from his father during his childhood, “Stop looking so superior!” (80). Doing so victimizes Richard, and elicits imagery of his harsh upbringing and compassionless parents. Yet simultaneously, it harks to the superior air carried by Francis or Henry. The accusatory word choice helps establish a divide between how Richard views himself and how he appears to others. And finally, his elaborate sentences and parenthetical asides, explaining “the way (his) mouth has of turning down at the corners” and his less-than-inconspicuous “trick of ducking into doorways” (80) show a clear sense of self-retrospection and contrast his elusive appearance with his awkward inner self. All of this has the effect of clueing in the reader to a previously unknown impression that Richard projects. It’s an impression that explains the way he’s been treated up to this point by the elite few, in a way that the reader may not have considered. Through his use of self-reflective dialogue and negative connotations, Richard’s peers seem more understandable and are brought down to earth.
This unintentional impression is further understood by Richard’s foreign, almost alien approach to himself as the passage continues. He explains that the others had been “bewildered” by him; found him “enigmatic” (80). Dark Academia, and the other students’ ethos as a whole, are centered around the pursuit of the unknown, the strange, and the phenomenal. Establishing Richard as an entity that embodied this, someone who had “ gone to such lengths to avoid them” while refusing to tell “anyone anything” about himself, builds him up as incredibly interesting and revered by the group of five – despite both of these being behaviors Richard had no awareness he displayed (80). On top of that, the reader, having chosen “A Secret History”, most likely shares the reverence for these elusive Dark Academia concepts – and is therefore drawn into this sudden shift in tone. Richard is now being perceived, through his narration, as an aspirational character rather than an inferior one. This all works to shift the way the reader interprets the relationship between Richard and the other students – he’s now raised on a pedestal.
Before this passage, Julian’s students are cold and unwelcoming, looking down at Richard. However, throughout this passage, Richard simultaneously displays a matured understanding of his outward appearance, while also personifying the alien perspective any other student would have had toward him. Not only does this single passage bring the other students down into a place of understanding and forgiveness, but also raises Richard into his own revered position in relation to them. Ironically, the harsh, alien approach to Richard’s character actually furthers this effect. It draws out the unique values of what is respected in Dark Academia culture and what isn’t. Even if these values contradict the reader’s own, the narration seamlessly integrates their perspective into that of the other students, until they see Richard just as Henry might, and perhaps impresses a few of these values on the reader in the process. In short, it juxtaposes the previously accepted awkward and bumbling Richard with the dark, mysterious Richard – a Richard who unmistakably belongs to the eccentric group of five.
Excerpt: “All my life, people have taken my shyness for sullenness, snobbery, bad temper of one sort or another. ‘Stop looking so superior!’ my father sometimes used to shout at me when I was eating, watching television, or otherwise minding my own business. But this facial cast of mine (that’s what I think it is, really, a way my mouth has of turning down at the corners, it has little to do with my actual moods) has worked as often to my favor as to my disadvantage.
Months after I got to know the five of them, I found to my surprise that at the start they’d been nearly as bewildered by me as I by them. It never occurred to me that my behavior could seem to them anything but awkward and provincial, certainly not that it would appear as enigmatic as it in fact did; why, they eventually asked me, hadn’t I told anyone anything about myself?
Why had I gone to such lengths to avoid them? (Startled, I realized my trick of ducking into doorways wasn’t as clandestine as I’d thought.) And why hadn’t I returned any of their invitations?
Though I had believed they were snubbing me, now I realize they were only waiting, politely as maiden aunts, for me to make the next move” (Tartt 80).