The Secret History outlines the idea that seemingly important and serious philosophical pursuits can sometimes lead people astray and put them out of touch with rational life. Henry is a primary example of this phenomenon. Though he may be capable of speaking many languages and reciting large sections of poetry, he is completely unaware of the realities of the world around him. He is often cited as the most intelligent member of the Greek students, yet he is surprised to learn that men have walked on the moon. He also relies on ancient texts to teach himself about antidotes, until Richard insists that he check more recent sources—ultimately suggesting that his intelligence is, in many ways, tied to a certain bookish impracticality. Nevertheless, Henry thrives in discussions of all things Greek, making him Julian’s prized student.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Bunny, who, despite studying Greek, isn’t even that good at writing in English. In one of the novel’s most comical moments, Bunny writes a paper on John Donne, Isaak Walton, and “Metahemeralism.” The paper is completely incomprehensible, largely because “metahemeralism” is a made-up concept that Bunny is incapable of defining. The world of academia is completely anathema to Bunny’s talents and who he is as person. However, unlike the other Greek students, Bunny is actually in touch with contemporary society. He has a girlfriend, often attends parties, and spends time with people who aren’t Greek students. In addition, Bunny is the first one to show Richard kindness and invite him into the group. Though the Greek students often treat him like an idiot, the letter Julian finds after Bunny’s death reveals that he was much more aware of the reality of his situation than he let on. In retrospect, Richard realizes that Bunny could be quite insightful at times, especially in regard to Julian. Perhaps surprisingly, then, the character in the novel who is the least intellectual ends up being the most rational, thus implying that sometimes an obsession with academia or erudite pursuits can cause people to lose sight of everything but a narrow-minded—albeit intellectual—worldview.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Intellectual Pursuits and Reasonability ThemeTracker
Intellectual Pursuits and Reasonability Quotes in The Secret History
The Greeks, you know, really weren’t very different from us. They were a very formal people, extraordinarily civilized, rather repressed. And yet they were frequently swept away en masse by the wildest enthusiasm—dancing, frenzies, slaughter, visions—which for us, I suppose would seem clinical madness, irreversible. Yet the Greeks—some of them, anyway—could go in and out of it as they pleased [. . .] The revelers were apparently hurled back into a non-rational, pre-intellectual state, where the personality was replaced by something completely different – and by ‘different’ I mean something to all appearances not mortal. Inhuman.
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?
Then Henry spoke. His words were low but deliberate and distinct. “Should I do what is necessary?”
To my surprise, Julian took both Henry’s hands in his own. “You should only, ever, do what is necessary,” he said.
There is a recurrent scene from those dinners that surfaces again and again, like an obsessive undercurrent in a dream. Julian, at the head of the long table, rises to his feet and lifts his wineglass. “Live forever,” he says.
Just for the record, I do not consider myself an evil person (though how like a killer that makes me sound!). Whenever I read about murders in the news I am struck by the dogged, almost touching assurance with which interstate stranglers, needle-happy pediatricians, the depraved and guilty of all descriptions fail to recognize the evil in themselves; feel compelled, even to assert a kind of spurious decency. “Basically I am a very good person.” This from the latest serial killer—destined for the chair, they say—who, with incarnadine axe, recently dispatched half a dozen registered nurses in Texas. I have followed his case with interest in the papers.
You see, then, how quick it was. And it is impossible to slow down this film, to examine individual frames. I see now what I saw then, flashing by with the swift, deceptive ease of an accident: shower of gravel, wind-milling arms, a hand that claws at a branch and misses. A barrage of frightened crows explodes from the underbrush, cawing and dark against the sky. Cut to Henry stepping back from the edge. Then the film flaps up in the projector and the screen goes black. Consummatum est.
Henry took a sip of his tea. “How,” he said, “can I possibly make the Dean of Studies understand that there is a divinity in our midst?”
He was looking over the hills, at all that grand cinematic expanse of men and wilderness and snow that lay beneath us; and though his voice was anxious there was a strange dreamy look on his face. The business had upset him, that I knew, but I also knew that there was something about the operatic sweep of the search which could not fail to appeal to him and that he was pleased, however obscurely, with the aesthetics of the thing.
“Well, they painted it with a dado, sort of, those awful Gucci stripes. It was in all kinds of magazines. House Beautiful had it in some ridiculous article they did on Whimsy in Decorating or some absurd idea—you know, where they tell you to paint a giant lobster or something on your bedroom celling and it’s supposed to be very witty and attractive.” He lit a cigarette. “I mean, that’s exactly the kind of people they are,” he said. “All surface. Bunny was the best of them by a long shot[. . .]”
It has always been hard for me to talk about Julian without romanticizing him. In many ways, I loved him the most of all; and it is with him that I am most tempted to embroider, to flatter, to basically reinvent. I think that is because Julian himself was constantly in the process of reinventing the people and events around him, conferring kindness, or wisdom, or bravery, or charm, on actions which contained nothing of the sort. It was one of the reasons I loved him: for that flattering light in which he saw me, for the person I was when I was with him, for what it was he allowed me to be.
“Are you happy here?” I said at last.
He considered this for a moment. “Not particularly,” he said. “But you’re not very happy where you are, either.”
