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The central conflict of The Secret History is, as the narrator Richard declares as his fatal flaw, the longing for the picturesque at any cost. All the novel’s characters, including and especially Richard, are obsessed with outer appearances, and it is this obsession that drives most of their actions and relationships. However, in their quest for beauty in all aspects of their lives, they tend to overlook what is on the inside. This blindness, along with keeping dark secrets, is what ultimately leads to two murders, one suicide, and the deterioration of several relationships. 

The inciting incident occurs when Richard comes across a brochure for Hampden College while attending a school in his hometown of Plano, California. Having spent his whole life in what he sees as a barren wasteland, Richard has a romantic view of anything classic or ancient, including the exclusive Hampden College in Vermont. Richard’s decision to transfer schools and move across the country shows just how susceptible he is to appearances and how little consideration he puts into major life choices. At Hampden, Richard makes further decisions based solely on appearances. He is charmed by the exclusivity of Julian Morrow’s ancient Greek class and his privileged, intellectual students, so much so that he is motivated to drop all his other classes to join the five students deemed acceptable by Julian. Not only has Richard isolated himself in the small college of Hampden, but he becomes further isolated by cutting himself off from most of the student body. Though Richard feels he has made close friends with Julian’s five other students, this chosen isolation will prove to be extremely detrimental to him.

The rising action occurs when Richard learns that four of his friends have committed a murder and that the fifth, Bunny, knows about it and is threatening to expose them. Bunny is blackmailing the others, making them pay for things he can no longer afford. When Henry, Francis, Charles, and Camilla engaged in the bacchanal, they drugged and poisoned themselves to attain the terrible beauty that Julian discussed in class. The farmer who died as a result of their loss of inhibition is simply collateral damage. However, their secret proves to have real-world consequences. Bunny, who figured out their secret on his own, becomes increasingly unhinged as more time passes. He is more upset that he was left out of the group’s bacchanal than over the murder of the farmer itself. However, Henry figures out how to manipulate Richard before he discovers their secret on his own, using Richard’s longing for acceptance against him. 

The tension continues to rise as Henry crafts a plot to kill Bunny, explaining to the others that they have no other choice if they want to protect themselves. Not only is Bunny a liability to the group as a whole, but they also turn against him individually as Bunny begins taunting each one, using their secrets against them. Bunny is murdered when he is pushed off a trail into a ravine, with the whole group present. His death instigates a chain of effects on the students’ physical and mental health. Their guilt haunts them, especially as Bunny’s body remains undiscovered for a time with the recent snowfall. After Bunny’s body is found, the students move even closer to a breaking point, drinking to excess or having panic attacks. Despite having murdered Bunny for the good of the group, they begin to turn against each other.

The climax of the novel occurs when Charles has reached his breaking point, paranoid that Henry is trying to kill him. Tension peaks as he escapes from Francis’s country house, where Richard and Francis have been trying to contain him, and goes after Henry with a gun. Richard is accidentally shot. Henry gets the gun away from Charles and, after whispering something to Camilla, shoots himself in the head, fulfilling what he saw as his duty to protect his classmates, just as the hero in a Greek tragedy would do. Richard, who has idolized Henry from their first meeting, continues to see Henry in this way even years after his death. In Richard’s final dream, described in the Epilogue, Henry even says he is not actually dead. The other students were never able to overcome their guilt over the murders. Francis is suicidal, and the relationship between Charles and Camilla is dead. The events at Hampden haunt Richard so much that he feels he must tell the story.

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