The novel often hints that Julian was in on some of the clique's goings-on; he only flees when he thinks they're about to be caught. Early portions of the story are written in a way that hints he actively had something to do with it. Although unlikely, he seems a little too perceptive to turn a blind eye to the fact that something is going on with his students.
There was stated to be another figure there during the bacchanal, someone who Henry thinks is Dionysus. Could this "Dionysus" have been Julian?
Is Bunny genuinely bigoted, or just trying to get a rise out of the rest of the clique? And do they dislike him because he's prejudiced, or simply because the way he expresses it is too barbaric and gauche?
Henry and Camilla's relationship. It's ambiguous as to whether they had any physical relationship as well as whether the feelings between them were romantic or merely a mutual respect for one another. Camilla outright states at the end that she cannot marry Richard because she is still in love with Henry, even years after his death, but his feelings for her are left ambiguous.
This post gathers the clues peppered throughout the text regarding Henry and Camilla' relationship and builds a very convincing case for the existence of a romantic relationship between these two.
Is Henry really the sociopathic chess-master he presents himself as? Or are his behavior and claims of having finally found himself through murdering Bunny just him trying to deny to himself that he's in over his head and traumatized by what he's done?
Speaking of Henry, why does he kill himself at the end? Does he genuinely feel remorse for his actions? Is he trying to protect his friends? Or does he just see that the game is up and decide to go out in a way befitting his Greek and Roman heroes, whose careers often ended in suicide?
Does Charles take advantage of Francis' unrequited love for him to get Sex for Solace, only to treat him coldly the mornings after? Or does Francis take advantage of Charles in his drunken, emotionally vulnerable moments? Or is it somewhere in the middle?
Is Richard the Neo-Romanticist aesthete he paints himself as in his narration? Or is this self-image simply an attempt to paint over nastier tendencies, including racism, sexism, and classist self-loathing? Even the persons who are subject to his romantic interest are viewed through Richard's eyes as submissive accessories to his own ego, rather than individuals with agency in their own right.
When Georges Laforgue suggests that Julian chooses his students based on appearance, how is this to be taken? Richard's imagination suggests that Laforgue is referring the possibility that Julian chooses his students based on attractiveness, and quite possibly a desire to have an affair with them. However, another reading might suggest that Laforgue is pointing out Julian's racial and class-based biases in choosing principally white students, particularly those who seem wealthy (Bunny and Richard don't actually have money, but they can "pass" as rich kids to some extent.)
There is a very common interpretation that the other members of the Greek Class actually hate Richard, only tolerating him either to manipulate him or because he is The Thing That Would Not Leave. It's mostly said as a joke, about readers projecting their own dislike of Richard into the characters, but a lot of fans think there is some truth to this, thanks mostly to no one acknowledging Richard when he is shot.
Did Bunny actually come to especially hate Richard out of jealousy, as the rest of the Greek Class tell Richard, or did they lie about that to further sway him to their side? While Bunny did had moments of cruelty to Richard, as he did with everyone around him in the weeks leading up to his murder, it is notable that the letter Bunny sent to Julian about the killing of the farmer had insults and accusations about everyone in the Greek Class except for Richard.
Just how consensual is the sexual relationship between Charles and Camilla? Most of what we know is from Francis, who paints a pretty damning picture — though bear in mind he's an Unreliable Expositor by virtue of being a rival suitor for Charles's affections. How much agency does someone like Camilla have in this situation, where she does not have the money to get away from him and has to take refuge with Henry when Charles finally tries to kill her?
Francis: Not that I think it's so terrible, either—from a moral standpoint, that is—but it's not at all the casual, good-natured sort of thing that one might hope. It runs a lot more deep and nasty. [...] Neither one cares about anybody but himself—or herself, as the case may be. They like to present a unified front but I don't even know how much they care about each other. [...] She'd behave a lot more like Charles if she were allowed to; he's so possessive, though, he keeps her reeled in pretty tight. Can you imagine a worse situation? He watches her like a hawk.
Why does Camilla turn down Richard's marriage proposal? Is she telling the truth about needing to care for her grandmother, or just making excuses to let him down easy?
Diagnosed by the Audience: Henry is sometimes thought to be autistic in an Absent-Minded Professor sort of way. Even in comparison to his Ditzy Genius friends, Henry stands out as different. He has No Social Skills, is bothered by a wide range of stimuli, and has a very clear special interests in languages and antiquity. Bunny reports Henry was a hyperlexic child — "one of those kids who can read at college level when they're about two years old." Autistic people are known for trying to patch their social deficits by mirroring concepts or social behavior learned from TV. With Henry it's less obvious because the only media he consumes is Ancient Greek texts, but he is certainly mirroring his own behavior after that.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Many fans will tell you, that the book made them want to have a Bacchanal and possibly murder someone because of how cool it sounds in the book.
Epileptic Trees: Probably the most popular fan theory is that the farmer was actually killed by a puma. Charles has a large, clearly inhuman bite, which suggests some sort of animal involvement. Near the end, driving at night, Richard and Francis briefly see what's probably a puma. The idea that the kids stumbled across a random animal mauling, concluded it was their doing, and then did an intentional murder to cover that up, makes the whole thing more ridiculous and tragic in a way that's in keeping with the story's themes.
Henry: Charles had a bloody bitemark on his arm that he had no idea how he'd got, but it wasn't a human bite. Too big. And strange puncture marks instead of teeth. [...] Francis: You've never seen anything like it. Four inches around and the teeth marks just gouged in.
In an early chapter, Camilla steps on broken glass. Charles refuses to pull it out, feeling too guilty when Camilla winces in pain every time he tries, leading Henry to have to do it. This becomes a lot harder to read after Charles turns increasingly jealous and physically abusive towards Camilla.
The clique's use of Classical references to distinguish themselves from the more modern and progressive out-groups at Hampden may not have read as such when the book was published in 1992, but it bears a startling resemblance to contemporary political groups and online communities that reference Classical imagery to signal an affiliation with far-right and neo-reactionary politics focused around the promotion of societal inequity.
Very early on, Richard sees Henry and Julian having a conversation when they think they're alone, at the end of which, Henry kisses Julian on the cheek. This is a bit suspect on its own, and much more so when thought of in the context of the Greek tradition of Lover and Beloved. (Remember than Henry was the one who had the idea for the bacchanal; there's precedent for him getting ideas for sexual behavior from his studies.) Henry is deeply devoted to Julian, and takes his departure very hard.
Henry: I loved him more than my own father. I loved him more than anyone in the world.
Richard has homoerotic subtext with his male friends — Henry, Charles, and especially Francis — but not Bunny, who is "about as erotic as an old football coach."
Charles: Richard's narration about how attractive Camilla is often compares her looks to her brother.
Francis: Richard makes out with and nearly has a sexual encounter with Francis, but nonetheless tells Francis he's not into him.
Henry
Bunny tells Richard that Henry is "not what you think he is." Richard's first thought is to go on for 1.5 pages wondering is Henry gay, is he gay for Bunny, and deciding that if Henry were to be gay for anyone it couldn't be Bunny because he's not hot enough. This all says a lot more about Richard than it does about Henry.
At the end, Henry appears to Richard in a dream. Richard compares it to when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream in the The Iliad. In the Illiad itself, Achilles and Patroklos's relationship ambiguously straddles the boarder of Tragic Bromance and Implied Love Interests. However, people were interpreting them as straightforward lovers as far back as Ancient Greece, with Aeschylus and Plato both regarding them as such.
Richard describes Charles and Francis as attractive off the bat, but Henry not so much. Henry is magnetic, but stiff and charmless, and this shapes Richard's first impression. However, near the end of the book — once Richard has gotten to know Henry better — he has a moment where he realizes that actually Henry is attractive after all.
I had never thought Henry handsome—indeed, I'd always thought that only the formality of his bearing saved him from mediocrity, as far as looks went—but now, less rigid, and locked-up in his movements, he had a sure tigerish grace the swiftness and ease of which surprised me.
In interviews, Donna Tartt has said that if Richard were Gender Flipped, this new rendition of the main character would seem too in love with Henry.
1993 interview: If the narrator had been a young woman, there would have been — always, always — the question, "Well obviously obviously there's some sexual attraction that she has to Henry or to Julian," and I didn't want to bring that in at all, because it's not. And if she had been a woman, that question would've been asked, it just would've been.
2013 interview: I couldn't have told the story I wanted to tell from a female point of view, because then there would be the question, "Is she doing this because she's attracted to him?" It would have been an interesting novel, but it wasn't the novel I wanted to write. There had to be no question, a way to keep it a purely moral decision and that was the territory of the novel. My main character had to be male.
The fact that the first thing Francis does upon meeting Richard is to ask "Cubitum eamus?"—asking if he'd sleep with him, in Latin.
The twins realize that they forgot to plan a meal for their dinner with Bunny, and bleakly state that their dinner plans with Bunny slipped their minds since the plot was to murder Bunny at 2 O’clock. Francis's hilariously callous response "Asparagus is in season," is a popular meme within the fandom.
Misaimed Fandom: The Secret History is the seminal text of the "dark academia" aesthetic community, who sometimes revel in and romanticize the very things the book warns against. That said, it's a somewhat downplayed example because Richard himself can't really escape it either. He know better now, in theory, but he can't seem to actually tear himself away. Even in hindsight, knowing everything he knows about Julian, Richard can't help but romanticize him. He still wears the hand-me-down suits Francis gave him nine years later.
I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone's life when character is fixed forever; for me, it was that first fall term I spent at Hampden. So many things remain with me from that time, even now: those preferences in clothes and books and even food—acquired then, and largely, I must admit, in adolescent emulation of the rest of the Greek class—have stayed with me through the years.
One-Scene Wonder: We get one big scene of Julian: the lecture where they talk about bacchanals early in the book. In that scene, Julian is dynamic, strange, enigmatic—out of time and larger than life. But for the rest of the book he gets very little screen-time, and we never again hear about what a session of Greek class actually looks like.
This may be partly because, if we saw the actual content of those classes, we might realize Julian is not the Big Good that Richard perceives him to be.
Donna Tartt has mentioned this in an interview:
Interview: In the early parts of the book they speak so glowingly of Julian, and I try to give little clues to the fact that this is really not the case. The things that they're telling you about Julian don't quite coincide with the way that he behaves. Because if he loves them so much, why do they see him so little? He seems very unconcerned with their — y'know, they talk about how he loves them all the time — but he is very removed from their lives in a physical sense.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some readers feel this way about Julian, expecting him to have a much larger influence on the plot than he ultimately does. In particular, readers are split on whether the novel places too much blame for the various deaths onto Henry, while failing to explore the ramifications of Julian essentially running a personality cult around himself.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Early into the book, Richard and Julian have a discussion about the difference between Romanticists and Classicists. Julian observes that Romanticists are often failed Classicists. This foreshadows the end of the story, in which the clique's beautiful worldview is upended by the tragedy caused by several cascading bad decisions. The conversation also reflects a broader theme about the uses of history and myth, and whether they should be viewed as a source of aspirational meaning or picked apart for some of the uglier ideas they reflect.
This discussion certainly has a basis in history. The romantic poet Lord Byron's journey to Greece and expressions of support for a revolution against the Turks had roots in an obsession with classical civilization.
Some of the more popular contemporary Classicists such as Mary Beard often make their goal to reveal the less pleasant side of the biases and attitudes (including sexism and classism) that informed the Classical world, even as Classical imagery is romanticized, context-free or with a variety of thinly-veiled political and philosophical intentions, by individuals who favor the notion of an idealized past.
The classics group are disturbingly ignorant about more recent history or politics, to the point of describing the fifth century as "modern". However, several of the attitudes expressed by members of the group (principally elitism, out-group discrimination, a fixation on martial symbolism, and fetishization of a mythologized past) are warning signs of fascism. Notably, although a few postwar literary figures are mentioned here and there, the classics clique live as though they were in a world where the Second World War never happened.
Georges Laforgue is a consciously created parody of Michel Foucault, a French academic who argued that every idea held dear in academia should be thoroughly deconstructed and unpacked, as it might be a possible form of indoctrination into a pro-authority (if not outright authoritarian) ideology. In contemporary humanistic fields within academia, acolytes of Foucault's ideas proliferate. Meanwhile, more traditional pedagogues like Julian are seen as suspect. Someone like Julian would therefore be seen as a virulent defender of dangerously obsolete and discredited theories that—in their eyes—do little more than serve as apologetics for society's worst failings. Through Richard's eyes, Foucault's notions (and thus Laforgue's) would be unappealing due to their goal of bursting his quaintly romantic bubble. So the exaggeratedly old-fashioned Julian Morrow is viewed as a more appealing contrast.
In addition to class-based elitism, one reading of the Classics clique's adventures might suggest an element of racial resentment in their grouping and in Richard's choice to join them. The entire group is noticeably and exclusively white, and all of them choose to focus their studies and travels on Europe, with the pursuit of non-European knowledge limited to Henry's extracurricular readings in Asian Studies. Georges Laforgue—one of the only named characters who is explicitly coded as a person of color—represents an alternative to the Classics group's studies that Richard immediately rejects.
gathers the clues peppered throughout the text regarding Henry and Camilla' relationship and builds a very convincing case for the existence of a romantic relationship between these two.