47 pages • 1 hour read
The Secret History
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Richard opens Chapter 6 with the assessment that he does not consider himself “an evil person” (275) for participating in Bunny’s murder. He explains that the murder felt practical and necessary at the time, and that the degree of thought they put into it—spurred by Henry—helped the murder to feel possible and made it seem like “the easiest thing in the world” (277). After the five students leave the scene of Bunny’s murder, they review their alibi. As they talk, the April weather rapidly cools, and it begins to snow. Over the next few days, Richard experiences the first in a series of terrible nightmares that reoccur at intervals throughout the rest of the novel. In class, Julian is curious about Bunny’s absence. At first, Henry excuses his absence with the cold weather, but as the snowy days accumulate, Julian grows suspicious. After a few more days, Bunny’s friend Cloke Rayburn—popularly known as the Hampden College drug dealer—asks Richard about Bunny’s whereabouts and explains that Marion is trying to locate him. Cloke confides that recently, he has noticed that Bunny has had a lot of cash, and he worries that Bunny might have become involved in drug dealing. Cloke insinuates that something bad might have happened to Bunny in the course of a visit to one of his own connections in New York.
Charles and Cloke search Bunny’s room, and Charles discovers a copy of an article from the Hampden Examiner about the farmer’s “mysterious death” (312). Before long, Student Services, Security, and eventually the police become involved in the search for Bunny. School officials quickly become anxious about police involvement in the case, worrying that the disappearance will reflect poorly on the school. The snow continues to fall, and the police mobilize a search party and interview key subjects, including Henry, Charles, and Cloke. Bunny’s disappearance becomes a hotly discussed topic around campus, and the local news begins to report on the issue. In a news article Camilla, Francis, and Richard read, they discover a series of amusing misconceptions about Bunny’s life and disappearance. For example, the article states that Bunny “was described by fellow students as ‘a scholar’” (322). Camilla, Francis, and Richard join the search party, which is filled with locals and people from the college. Suspicion is further deflected from the classics students when a local car mechanic interviewed by the news claims to have seen Bunny getting into a white Pontiac on Sunday afternoon.
The FBI arrives to conduct interviews, and they direct much of their suspicion toward Cloke, believing that Bunny may have been kidnapped. Tension rises, conflicted feelings flourish, and accusations fly from all angles as the search for Bunny continues. Charles begins to resent Henry as the FBI interviews them, and it becomes increasingly difficult to deflect attention from them. As the press reports increase, Charles begins drinking heavily. One day, the classics group gathers at Charles and Camilla’s house to drink away their anxieties, and Richard asks Camilla what happened on the night they killed the farmer. Camilla remorsefully describes a gruesome scene and tells Richard that she thinks they’re having bad luck with Bunny’s death because it is wrong to leave a body unburied, recalling Palinurus from the Aeneid. She also tells Richard that Henry made them kill a piglet after the murder because he believes “the only way to purify blood is through blood” (360). Richard is disturbed by the eerie calm with which Camilla tells this story.
The next night, Charles invites Richard out to drink, suggesting they go to a local bar where they’re unlikely to see anyone from the college. In the bar, the news plays on TV, and the local man continues to rant about OPEC and the Middle East. The rural Vermont bar patrons nod and vocalize their agreement with the man’s racially prejudiced views. A few days later, a student finds Bunny’s body while on a walk with her dog. Reporters bombard the classics students with questions.
The FBI agents state that their working theory is that Bunny was walking alone, wasn’t dressed warmly enough, and fell in his hurry to get home. Furthermore, they explain that the case is no longer considered a federal case because no federal offense has been committed.
Chapter 7 Summary
After Bunny’s death, many people in Hampden pretend that they knew Bunny in an attempt to glean meaning from his death, from college officials to anonymous weepers. As Richard explains, “‘He would have wanted it that way’ was a phrase I heard many times that week on the lips of people who had absolutely no idea what Bunny would have wanted” (377). After Bunny’s death, Henry goes to stay with the Corcorans in Connecticut as they prepare for the funeral. Richard lets himself be comforted by Judy Poovey and her girlfriends, who take him on outings and buy him drinks. Charles and Camilla drive separately to the Corcoran home in Connecticut, while Francis and Richard drive down with a girl named Sophie whom Bunny used to have a crush on. The Corcoran house is a clean, modern building, and the classics students are disgusted by the idea of something so sterile and new. Inside, Bunny’s large family congregates loudly. Overwhelmed by the noise and Mr. Corcoran’s displays of intense grief, Henry suffers from the stress-induced migraines he experienced with Bunny in Rome. Meanwhile, Charles disappears in Francis’s car and returns sloppily drunk.
The funeral includes a eulogy from Bunny’s older brother, an absurd tribute from his high school football coach, and an incredibly uncomfortable tribute from Henry. Opposed to reading a text that resonates with his own tastes, Henry stiffly, coldly, and awkwardly reads a Housman poem that Bunny loved and frequently recited from. Henry’s behavior at the burial is equally strange. When those close to Bunny are invited to cast handfuls of soil onto the coffin, Henry slowly lets the soil “trickle from his fingers,” and then, “with terrible composure, step[s] back and absently drag[s] the hand across his chest” (420).
Chapters 6-7 Analysis
Chapters 6 and 7 explore a different aspect of The Morbid Aesthetic of Death and Beauty, for even people who do not know Bunny well indulge in the urge to philosophize about his death in a search for greater meaning. Many myths and stories circulate around Bunny’s death, and Tartt implies that—just as the people of the community create false characterizations of Bunny—even the classics students have only a limited knowledge of Bunny’s true self and that, presumably, they still harbor many secrets from each other. Meanwhile, unable to speak for himself, Bunny serves as a springboard to allow people to tell whatever stories they want about his life and death. For example, Cloke is initially convinced that Bunny fell in with a bad crowd among the drug dealers they knew—and he himself becomes a convenient scapegoat for the FBI. Bigoted Hampden locals eagerly project stories of an “Arab” kidnapping onto Bunny’s death, propagating their own racist politics. Likewise, Hampden College students portray Bunny as a “scholar” despite the truth that he is barely able to read and write. Bunny’s high school football coach elevates him as a sports hero in his tribute at Bunny’s funeral. In many ways, the postmortem frenzy of storytelling and false meaning-making works to the classics students’ advantage, deflecting blame and attention. As Charles reflects: “I never realized, you know, how much we rely on appearances […] It’s not that we’re so smart, it’s just that we don’t look like we did it” (343). At the Corcoran’s house in Connecticut, however, it’s clear that both Charles and Henry have experienced more than they’re revealing to Camilla, Francis, and Richard, for they both exhibit symptoms of heightened stress far beyond that of the other students.
Chapters 6 and 7 also explore the complexity of Henry’s friendship with Bunny and the strangeness of the grieving process surrounding his death. Henry’s reading of the Housman poem that Bunny loved—in lieu of a more aesthetically elevated Greek epic—is a convoluted tribute to the aspects of Bunny’s personality he both loved and hated. While his recitation of the poem falls a bit flat within the confines of the funeral, his decision to use that particular piece can also be read as his one and only departure from the aesthetic that Julian’s teachings espouse. Thus, he paradoxically uses a poem for which he has little regard to create a different version of The Morbid Aesthetic of Death and Beauty, for by choosing this particular set of verses, he endeavors to create a situation in which art imitates life; in this case, the low-quality nature of the poem is meant to reflect Henry’s own low opinion of Bunny as a person.
However, even as authorities mistakenly assume that Bunny’s death is the result of an unfortunate accident and the guilty classics students glibly escape justice for their cold-blooded murder, the early indications of their internal guilt and torment reveal that even in the midst of their idealistic attempts to uphold Julian’s strange teachings, they are destined to suffer greatly for their crimes. In this case, they rely upon their outward appearance of affluence and innocence to cloak their culpability, but as Henry’s acute migraines and Charles’s new tendency toward heavy drinking imply, the theme of False Identity as a Tool and a Trap is still highly relevant to their situation. The classics students may have created a false identity for themselves as innocent bystanders in this affair, but the internal remorse over their actions will fester, and it is already clear that the previous cohesion of the group is destined to shatter forever in the coming chapters.
Unlock all 47 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Donna Tartt
