The Secret History Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Chapter 5 Summary: Chapter 5

Francis arrives home and sees that Henry has told Richard about the man they killed. Richard asks why they did not go to the police, and Henry answers that the people of Vermont would be glad to see four rich college students go to jail for life for an accident. Now their biggest worry is Bunny telling someone. The night the framer died, Bunny was waiting at Henry’s apartment and saw the four of them covered in blood when they arrived home. They told him they’d hit a deer. A few weeks later, Bunny read an article about a farmer who was found murdered. Bunny began making comments about how they must have killed the farmer. Though he was joking, this put the others on edge. Henry decided to take Bunny to Italy over the break to keep an eye on him.

One day in Italy, Henry went to bed with a debilitating headache. Upon getting up, he found Bunny reading his diary, in which he had written about the farmer. Henry and Francis explain to Richard that Bunny was not angry about the dead farmer but about being excluded from the event. In the weeks since, Henry and Francis have been spending thousands on Bunny to keep him quiet, though they know they cannot keep up the payments forever. Over the next few weeks, Bunny has occasional outbursts. He is angriest at Henry but takes his anger out on the rest of them, making pointed remarks about Charles’s excessive drinking, Francis’s homosexuality, Richard’s background, and his suspicion that Camilla and Charles sleep together. One day, Henry asks Richard for help with a dosage of poison. Henry plans to give enough to Bunny to kill him and make it look as if Bunny overdosed while taking a hallucinogen. Richard tells him the plan cannot work, though Henry says whatever he ends up doing will be dangerous.

By April, Henry, Francis, and the twins are running out of money, and Bunny is being more demanding than ever. One night, Bunny comes to Richard’s room, where he drunkenly reveals what he knows about the farmer. After he leaves, Richard tells the twins and Henry, who toy with other ideas of how to kill Bunny before he can tell anyone else. The next evening, Henry announces that Bunny will have an accident on his usual Sunday hike. On Sunday, Richard goes to the library, where he finds a note from Bunny for his girlfriend, Marion, explaining that he has gone to a party. Richard goes to the woods to find Henry, Francis, and the twins and reports that Bunny has gone to a party instead of going on his hike. However, as they get ready to leave, they hear someone approaching and see it is Bunny. Bunny is surprised but affable and asks what they are all doing there as Henry steps toward him.

Analysis: Chapter 5

As Henry reveals to Richard what Bunny knows and moves closer to carrying out his plan to silence Bunny, the dangers of isolation are demonstrated. Living in the already small world of Hampden, and only socializing with one another, has made Henry, Francis, Bunny, and the twins immune to the realities of the larger world. They place more importance on acting out an ancient Greek ritual than on the life of a man. In their bubble of privilege, they see themselves as the potential victims rather than the man they killed, which is why they do not contact the police. The fact that Henry’s instinct is to kill Bunny rather than try to reason with him somehow—together with the fact that the others go along with the idea of murder—also shows how much the group exists in their own world. To most people, even the suggestion to murder someone would be outrageous. However, the students’ privileged status, except for Richard, has already allowed them to go through life without real consequences for their actions. Being isolated at Hampden and within their small circle has only amplified how unaffected they are by the outside world. Of the five of them, Richard seems most concerned with their plan, which is likely why he is even telling the story in the first place. However, his desire to be accepted by them outweighs his conscience.

As latent truths begin to fester among the friends, their secrets begin to have consequences. Aside from the big, yet open, secret of the dead farmer, the friends refuse to acknowledge certain things about themselves. While everyone is aware of these “secrets,” they all choose to ignore them except for Bunny, who, in his anger, uses them against his friends. Charles’s drinking, Francis’s sexuality, Richard’s social status, and Charles and Camilla’s inappropriate relationship are obvious enough to everyone. However, these are all things they are most insecure about, and so they do not speak about them. Bunny knows that these secrets are more powerful weapons than what his friends are trying to hide about the farmer, and it is his needling about them that bothers the others more than the prospect of Bunny telling about the farmer’s murder.

The dynamics of the group’s friendship are revealed in the secrets they choose to keep from one another and in the fallout from Bunny’s learning about the farmer. The six of them seem like extremely close friends, spending most of their free time together. However, they still go out of their way to hide basic facts about themselves. Though Henry and Bunny are supposed to be best friends, their relationship seems largely transactional. Bunny exploits Henry in exchange for keeping his secret. The friendship between the six of them, therefore, is largely about using each other to reinforce what they want to believe about themselves rather than feeling genuine closeness with one another.

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