The Secret History

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”

In the prologue of The Secret History, the novel’s narrator—Richard Papen—recalls the incident of his friend Bunny’s murder. Richard confesses that although he was not a direct participant in the murder itself, he helped his classics friends to plan and cover up the murder. He reflects on the uncanny quality of both the incident and his recurrent memories of it, detailing the tension between the unlikely, impossible-seeming idea of murder and repeating the phrase, “It is difficult to believe” (ii), thus reflecting his astonishment at how swift and simple the act of murder itself turned out to be. The very swiftness of the incident invites Richard to revisit it often in his memory, and because this incident of Bunny’s murder has become such an essential feature of Richard’s thought processes and perspective on the world, he understands that it is the single most significant event of his life.

“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”

Richard opens Chapter 1 with this reflection on the “fatal flaw” that led him to pursue studies at Hampden College in Vermont, seeking an escape from his decidedly bland life in Plano, California: a community of “drive-ins, tract homes, waves of heat rising from the blacktop” (7). This longing for “the picturesque” also led him to join Julian’s classics program and attempt to connect with the five mysterious, illustrious students in the program.