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Terry ~ Huntress of Erudition asked this question about The Secret History:
Does anyone else but me think that the Classics professor was involved with the murders?
Cari It is no coincidence that Julian chose kids without any parental guidance and was very keen on not having any outside supervision (ie. other faculty i…moreIt is no coincidence that Julian chose kids without any parental guidance and was very keen on not having any outside supervision (ie. other faculty involved). That is never a sign of good intentions. He wanted a group of vulnerable kids to influence without any questioning.
Julian was calculating, self-absorbed and cruel. When he described the mysteries of the bacchanal so alluringly, I understood it as an invitation to explore this idea. That part when he and Henry are talking about "necessary" things is quite suspect. I am sure Julian encouraged Henry to pursue a bacchanal by any means necessary, while at the same time maintaining his saintly persona. If you tell a group of impressionable people to have a bacchanal in the way the followers of Bacchus did, there is not only sex but also extreme violence involved. This Julian clearly understood. In my mind, there is no question he manipulated Henry into it.

Julian likes to play naïve and his students, truly naïve themselves, really believe things such as that Julian doesn't know that they use drugs or that someone like Bunny, who clearly was no scholar, wrote his own papers without assistance. Aside from Henry, Richard explains they didn't even know where Julian lived, that it wasn't uncommon for Julian to pretend that he didn't know them in public and that they really didn't know much about Julian. And yet, they all mistakenly believed Julian loved them. A very convenient belief cultivated by Julian so that his students would shield him from any consequences of their wrongdoing.

Then during Bunny's funeral, Julian has that moment when his façade drops for a minute and joyfully tells Henry that it is all like a Dostoyevsky novel. For someone who rejects all modernity and only finds beauty and value in the classics (of antiquity), what an odd thing to say. Of all novelists, to invoke the one who wrote "Crime and Punishment," which is also quoted in that part of the story, is not a coincidence. In that novel, a gruesome murder is carefully planned and executed. Worst of all, when Julian says the funeral reminds him of Dostoyevsky, he is clearly happy about it. At that point, in my mind, there is no doubt he knows exactly what is going on.

The moment Henry and Richard inadvertently force him to acknowledge the situation in the letter, he can no longer pretend to be oblivious and his game is over. He clearly will not be implicated and his students, spiraling out of control, are not longer useful for discreetly enacting his dark ideals, so he leaves.

The big question for me is whether he has done this before. What happened to the group of students before Richard's? Since Henry was determined to protect him (ie. the contradictory statements that Julian knew "all/not all" about the bacchanal), we will never know the full extent of his involvement. However, to me there is no doubt Julian is the mastermind behind Henry's unhinged ideas/plans. Julian chose him precisely because Henry had the charisma to make the group carry out his (Julian's) ideas.(less)
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The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
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