Beauty and Terror Theme Analysis

Early in The Secret History, Julian gives a lecture on the relationship between beauty and terror. It is an idea that harkens back to Aristotle who, in Poetics, argues that objects that are terrifying in real life—such as a corpse—can be beautiful when elevated to the realm of art. Although this lecture occurs within the context of Richard’s Greek class, it is also a commentary on the novel itself. With The Secret History, Tartt is interested in creating a work of beauty that it is also terrifying. In many ways, the novel is grotesque; the first murder the students commit is especially brutal, as are the ceremonies they engage in, particularly the one in which they slaughter a piglet and cover themselves in its blood. Though Tartt doesn’t usually withhold descriptions from the reader, she often describes violent events briefly or impressionistically. Violence is a central part of The Secret History, but it is never overwhelming. What is overwhelming, however, at least for the novel’s characters, are the consequences of violence.

To that end, it is in the aftermath of violence that Richard and the other Greek students are confronted with genuine terror. This terror comes in the form of guilt, law enforcement, and unintended consequences. It also comes about because the Greek students have strayed from Aristotle’s ideas about beauty and terror. After all, Aristotle only connects beauty and terror as a way to prove a broader argument about how humans naturally take pleasure in artistic representation. It’s not that humans find corpses beautiful, then, but that they find artistic representations of corpses beautiful. Henry, however, gets hung up on the idea that beauty is terror. Therefore, the problem that arises for the Greek students in The Secret History is that they actually kill the farmer (and, later, Bunny). And though someone like Henry might hope to find beauty in this otherwise horrifying experience, such a viewpoint doesn’t quite align with Aristotle’s philosophy because it has nothing to do with art or representation—it’s real, and thus full of nothing but terror.