Explore the significance of the crime elements in this extract. Remember to include in your answer relevant

detailed analysis of the ways that the writer has shaped meanings.

This extract is from the middle point of Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’ (1992). The novel follows the

lives of six dynamic undergraduate Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek) students at Hampden College in

Vermont, USA. The six students are Edmund Corcoran – who goes by the nickname ‘Bunny’ – Henry Winter,

Francis Abernathy, the twins Camilla and Charles MacAulay, and Richard Papen, the novel’s narrator.

Earlier in the term, all the students – excepting Bunny – had re-enacted an Ancient Greek bacchanal

ceremony, resulting in the slaughtering of a deer. Bunny has found out about this secret ceremony and is

extorting the others; plans are formed to meet Bunny during one of his frequent rambles through

Hampden’s surrounding countryside.