History Literature / TheSecretHistory

* DidTheyOrDidntThey: Hand in hand with the LoveDodecahedron, the details of [[spoiler:Henry and Camilla's]] relationship--when it began, how far it went--are unclear.

* DividedWeFall: Henry's last-minute [[spoiler: HeroicSacrifice]] is the only reason their infighting doesn't get them caught. Of course, Henry had [[{{Chessmaster}} no small hand in that.]]

* DidTheyOrDidntThey: Goes hand in hand with the LoveDodecahedron, [[spoiler: especially with Henry and Camilla]].

* OutOfGenreExperience: The book is best known for its dark academia genre -- a sort of Creator/EvelynWaugh, Oxfordian vibe. But that's not strictly speaking ''the book'''s genre -- it's the clique's. The Classics clique create their own little world around themselves with a very distinctive genre to it. But every time Richard steps outside that world, the contrast is sharp. After a weekend spent at the country house, Richard mentioning "asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture" can be startling. Spend some time with Judy, and he's doing cocaine in the parking lot of Burger King. Walk away from the campus part of town, and there's a seedy bar with a padded-vinyl door full of Vermont working men in flannel shirts.

# Richard Papen, the story's FirstPersonPeripheralNarrator, a transfer student who, through a series of chance encounters, finds himself in the midst of this strange, mesmerizing group.

* PopCulturalOsmosis:
** There is an entire story arc in ''{{Series/Riverdale}}'' that is a WholePlotReference to this novel, with one of the main antagonists explicitly named after its author.
** The novel has become one of the flagship media references for a visual style known as [[https://bookriot.com/dark-academia-books/ "Dark Academia"]], which glamorizes traditional academic pursuits in the Humanities--particularly at American and European universities with a gothic, old-world flair (and, in some cases, an implicitly high price tag on tuition). Dark Academia has occasionally been criticized (''The Secret History'' in particular) on the grounds that fans might internalize some of the elitist biases the concept implies.

* OutOfGenreExperience: The book is best known for its dark academia genre -- a sort of Creator/EvelynWaugh type Oxfordian vibe. But that's not exactly ''the book'''a genre. The Classics clique create their own little world around themselves, and ''that'' is dark academia. But every time Richard steps outside that little world, the contrast is sharp. Spend some time with Judy, and he's doing cocaine in the parking lot of Burger King. Walk away from the campus part of town, and there's a seedy bar with a padded-vinyl door full of Vermont working men in flannel shirts. After a weekend spent at the country house, Richard mentioning "asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture" can be startling. It's easy to forgot that the clique's world is ''their'' genre, but not strictly speaking the ''book'''s genre.

* OutOfGenreExperience: The Classics clique create their own little world around themselves -- a decadent off-brand Oxford. Every time Richard steps outside that little world, the contrast is sharp. Spend some time with Judy, and he's doing cocaine in the parking lot of Burger King. Walk away from the campus part of town, and there's a seedy bar with a padded-vinyl door full of Vermont working men in flannel shirts. After a weekend spent at the country house, Richard mentioning "asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture" can be startling. It's easy to forgot that the clique's world is ''their'' genre, but not strictly speaking the ''book'''s genre.

** [[OneThingLedToAnother "Matters progressed."]]

* EverybodySmokes / SmokingIsGlamorous: All of the six but Richard smoke like chimneys, and even he smokes at parties. Well, it is a liberal arts college in the 80s.

* NominalImportance: Played with. The farmer's name is Harry Ray [=McRee=], as seen in a newspaper article reporting on his death. The clique never use this name. They continue to refer to him as "the farmer", because they don't care about him much.

* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: While most of the characters are implicitly classist (heck, the book is even assigned in college sociology classes because of it), Bunny (who makes mean comments about homosexuals, females, Catholics, Jews, Italians, and the lower-income over the course of the story) really takes the cake.

** One of the first things that Richard hears about Julian before meeting him is that he was a friend of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. This disturbingly foreshadows Julian's arrogance, elitism and reactionary politics - both Modernists were openly misogynistic, racist and in Pound's case pro-Nazi.

* {{Foil}}: Bunny and Richard are the two outsiders of the group. They're both jealous, and ''want'' to be part of the ingroup with these smart, glamourous, otherworldly friends. They go about it quite differently. Richard is shy, has resting bitch face, and feels uncomfortable about imposing himself on the group, preferring to wait for an invitation. Bunny is gregarious, extroverted, and always inviting himself to things. Neither has enough money to fit in with the group, and are trying to hide this, but again, differently. Richard does it by being self-sufficient and never asking his friends for anything, while Bunny asks for hand-outs all the time.
-->'''Henry:''' Look at you. Your parents aren't particularly generous with you, are they? But you're so scrupulous about not borrowing money that it's rather silly. Heavens. I think you might have died in that warehouse rather than wire one of us for a couple of hundred dollars. That's an infinitesimal sum. I'm sure we shall have spent two or three times that on Bunny by the end of next week.

* SmartPeopleKnowLatin: Other than Bunny, most of the clique and their instructor are fairly brainy and are obsessive about keeping up with their classical languages.
* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Camilla is the only girl is a group with 5 boys. ''Logistically'' speaking this needn't mean anything -- the boys are all AmbiguouslyBi, and at least 3 of the 5 have been known to get with each other after some fashion. But ''symbolically'' she is the central love interest for most of them. There's also some sense that being the boy who gets with Camilla would be a status symbol within the group.

* CulturallyReligious: Henry, Francis, and the twins. These days they're not particularly religious, but it still pisses them off when Bunny shit-talks Catholics.

** The first time Richard talks to Francis, Francis propositions him saying, "''Cubitum eamus?''" which in Latin means, roughly, "Shall we go to bed together?" Richard, who has only studied Greek, doesn't get it.
** Henry pulls a piece of glass out of Camilla's foot and declares, "''Consummatum est''" -- Latin for "It is done."
** They use "''cuniculus molestus''" -- Latin for "annoying rabbit" -- as a code name for Bunny.
** In Greek, "''méli''" means "honey".