The Price of Prestige: The Secret History and Academic Elitism

The Price of Prestige: The Secret History and Academic Elitism

What if intelligence was not a virtue, but a weapon? At first glance Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’ (TSH) is a thrilling murder mystery consisting of eccentric characters and their moral decay, but beneath this lays a deep critique of academia and the elitism that thrives within it. The novel follows Richard Papen, a working-class student who finds himself drawn to a quirky, small college in Vermont, where he goes to pursue classics- alongsi…