The Secret History

~Donna Tartt~
! TRIGGER WARNINGS !
• Murder
• Suicide
• Alcoholism
• Drugs
• Cult
• Homophobia
• Gay
If you are planning on reading this book, you shouldn’t
• Incest watch this presentation. It contains a lot of spoilers.

• Abuse
Prologue

• Six college students had a Bacchanal under the influence of their

professor. Killed some people. They got away with their crimes and
didn’t go to jail but their sanity torture them all.
• Romanticizing a murder
~CHARACTERS~
Henry Winter
• A whole new level of “doesn’t watch TV ”
• Rich
• Loves Homer
• Psychopath / Drama Queen / Manipulator
• Daddy issues
• Didn’t know that there was a Moon landing
• But for some reason they all follow his plan to
murder their friend anyway
• Kills for aesthetic
RICHARD PAPEN
• Unreliable narrator
• Romanticizes everything
• Depressed
• Made some poor life decisions
• Poor but pretends that he is rich
• Does cocaine in a Burger King parking lot
• Would rather spend the coldest winter in a
room without heating and with a hole in a
roof, than ask for a dollar
FRANCIS ABERNATHY
• Good fashion sense
• Gay
• Deserve better
• Non-stop smoking
• Poor health
• “how dare you tell me that I’m sick because of
smoking. I have been smoking all my life and I
know better than those doctors.”
CAMILLA MACAULAY
• Poisonous flower
• Manipulative
• Mystery
• Seductive
• Very feminine
• Can tell much about her because
the story is from Richard’s
perspective and he romanticized
her too much
CHARLES MACAULAY
• Drunk 24/7
• Liar
• Slept in a giant snail on a playground once
• Sweet
• Oop, turns out he’s actually abusive
• Jealous
EDMUND “BUNNY” CORCORAN
• Dead
• Homophobic
• Awful friend
• 25 and in collage
• Horrible person
• Making friends in college got him killed
MEETING
• After seeing the nice brochure for college Hampden, Richard is
accepted to a specific Greek class that has only six students.
• He’s trying hard to fit in with the group
• Bunny invites him to a dinar in his name, ordering the most expensive
disease only at the end to say he forgot his wallet at home and he
doesn’t have money to pay.
• Bunny calls Henry to come and write a check for them after henry
explains Bunny’s scam to Richard.
COUNTRYSIDE HOUSE
• They spend weekends in Francis’s
countryside house. The house was big
and vintage with a lake, surrounded by
forest.
• It was autumn, and they spend their time
there walking by the lake, having dinars,
playing cards on the porch, talking
about Greek, drinking and playing
crochet.
MURDERING THE FARMER

• All of a sudden, they all started to act weird. They have been
excluding Richard from some activities and lied to him.
• After he confronts Henry and Francis they told him the truth. Turns
out that they have been so motivated by their Greek professor that they
decided to throw a Bacchanal that resolved in murdering the farmer.
• After committing this crime, they all decided to run away to
Argentina, but their plan failed because all the money that was
supposed to go on a ticket was spent. Bunny spends all their money
without their knowledge.
BACCHANAL
• Ancient ritual performed in the name of the roman god Bacchus
(roman version of Dionysus).
• While performing it, Henry, Francis, Charles and Camilla each had a
different version of blackout.
• Henry, Francis and Charles remembered that they were chasing a deer.
Camilla belived that during that time she was a deer. When the boys
came to their senses they were 8 miles away from Francis’s property
and there was a dead body of a farmer in front of them, his neck was
broken and his brain was all over his face.
• Charles had a bloody mark on his arm. It wasn’t human. Too big. And
strange puncture marks instead of teeth. After some time they found
Camilla. She was quietly sitting by the water. Everything was clean on
her except her hair which was soaked in blood.
• They couldn’t really go to the police and report the death. They were
half naked, dressed in bed sheets, 8 miles away from their college and
soaked in blood. So they left the body there and went to Henry’s
apartment where Bunny unexpectedly stopped by, drunk of course.
They told him that they run over a deer, which was why they were
soaked in blood.
• Next day they were still traumatized and the farmers’ death was
reported under animal attack in a newspaper.
BUNNY
• Bunny was originally going to participate in Bacchanal but gave up
after a few failed tries. After a few weeks, he read an article in a
newspaper and started joking that they must have killed the farmer.
• Although he was joking, all of them were on edge, so Henry decided
to take him to Italy over break. One time, Henry woke up to Bunny
reading his diary in which he wrote about murder and Bunny was mad
that he was excluded from that.
• Francis and Henry use their rich status to buy his silence, but he just
demands more and more.
• Thean all the hell broke loose.
OUTBURSTS
• Over the next few days Bunny is the angriest at Henry, but takes his anger
out on everybody.
• Calling out Francis for being homosexual, Charles for his alcoholism, Ricard
for his lies about his past and accusing Camilla that she slept with her twin
brother.
• By Aprile, Henry, Francis and the twins are running out of money and Bunny
just spends more and more. One night he drunkenly comes to Richard
revealing to him that he knew everything, and they decide that they must kill
Bunny before he tells anyone else.
• Henry announces that Bunny will have an accident on his usual Saturday
hike.
BUNNY’S MURDER
• The plan was to push Bunny off the cliff when he goes for a hike, but
Richard chickens out at the last minute and goes to the library. There he
founds a note from Bunny saying that he went to a party instead a hike, so
he goes to tell everybody that he’s not gonna come.
• While they talking in a middle of a forest about what to do next, long and
behold: Bunny finds them drunk while coming back from a party.
• After that day no one has seen Bunny for the next few weeks until the snow
in the mountains melted and his body was finally found.
• The situation was now serious and the FBI was involved. they took them in
for questioning a few times because they were his only classmates.
• The questioning was thought for Charles since he seemed sweet and
innocent, FBI thought that if anybody’s gonna tell them something it
was him.
• But Charles knew better. He didn’t crack under the pressure. Although
so many hours spent in a room with cops constantly asking him the
same questions has affected him and he started drinking more than
before.
• In the end Bunny’s death has been declared and accident, since there
was alcohol in his body and snow washed all fingerprints.
• Shortly after, Bunny’s funeral happened and they all spend the weekend
at his family house to help prepare the funeral. His whole family is like
him, white trash.
• They teach their kids that it is embarrassing to work for money and then
send them into the world penniless.
• At his house everyone was at the edge. Seeing his big family grieving his
death and crying nonstop. They were loud fights among them selves and
Richard stole some ups and downs from Bunny’s mother’s closet to keep
himself contained.
• Everything started falling apart.
BRAKE DOWN
• One time, Richard comes to the twin’s apartment but only Camilla was
home. Shortly after, Charles comes home drunk and gives Camilla not
so brotherly kiss.
• Richard, still in shock from what he has seen, goes to Francis to ask
him for his opinion. Or rather did he know? Frances confirms that
Charles and Camilla probably slept a few times to get it out of them.
• One night Henry gives Richard money for a taxi and asks him to go
bail Charles out of jail because he’s been drunk driving. Henry didn’t
want to go personally because they had a big fight and Charles was
still mad at him.
• While driving Charles back from jail he told him why was he mad at
Henry. Henry and Camilla have been having an affair for a few months
now. One day he came home to an empty apartment. Camilla has moved
out and is now living in an inn that Henry pays for.

• When he confronts Camilla about all that, she tells him that she loves
Henry and that sometimes, when Charles comes home very drunk, he hit
her. She s scared of him which is why, when Henry gave her a chance to
get away from him, she did.
• One night, Charles was drunk and he went to Camilla’s new apartment.
Francis and Richard went after him before he makes more damage. Soon
after them, in the apartment comes Henry. With a gun.
• Fries he aimed at Charles and told everybody to stay still. Henry called
Camilla to come close to him, as she did. He gave her a small kiss on the
forehead and then fired two shots.
• People in the Inn heard shouting and a gun, they were trying to kick down
the door.
• One bullet Henry shot himself in the head, committing suicide. Camilla was
beside his body crying while Francis and Charles were too stunned to
speak. No one noticed Richard.
• Second bullet shoots Richard in the stomach, and when he yells at them that
he was shot they all seem rather disappointed.
TEN YEARS AFTER
• Richard is working in the office. He received a letter from Francis that
he was dying and that he would like to see him one more time. He
comes to the hospital and there finds Camilla, who receives the same
letter from Francis.
• After Francis’s family caught him in a relationship with a lawyer, they
gave him an ultimatum. Either he breaks up with a layer and marries
some nice girl or he’ll is cut out from the will.
• Now he is engaged to the girl he meet last week. He doesn’t love her,
but doesn’t really care since he believes he will die soon.
• Charles was sent to rehab. There he met a woman 30 years older than him
who already had a husband and a baby, and they run away together. Right
now they’re both in a horrible place since they ran away from rehab and
they live in a dump.
• Twins don’t talk anymore.
• Camilla stayed in her hometown to take care of her grandma.
• After they left the hospital, Richard’s feelings for Camilla came back and
he asked her to marry him, but she refuses.
• ‘Why not?’
‘Because I love Henry.’
‘Henry’s dead.’
‘I can’t help it, I still love him.’
~THE END~
Teodora Jaglicic II6