Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Secret History, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Human Capacity for Violence
Intellectual Pursuits and Reasonability
Guilt
Manipulation and Paranoia
Beauty and Terror
Class and Identity
Summary
Analysis
Richard Papen recounts the FBI’s discovery of a dead man named Bunny. Bunny’s disappearance led to a full-on manhunt; it took the FBI 10 days to find his body in the mountains because it was covered in snow. Richard, along with his friend Henry and three other as-of-yet unidentified people are responsible for Bunny’s death. However, the FBI never suspected them, and they got away with the crime. Years later, Bunny’s death still haunts Richard.
Donna Tartt has described The Secret History as a “whydunit.” In other words, it is a mystery story about why a crime was committed, rather than who committed the crime. Unlike normal murder mysteries, the killers in The Secret History are revealed almost immediately. Additionally, this story is being told from the perspective of one of the killers, which is also somewhat out of the ordinary.
Themes
