Rope And Donna Tartt's The Secret History

Compare the ways in which Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History explore the idea of the philosophy, crime and justice.
434977F

Throughout Rope and The Secret History, Alfred Hitchcock and Donna Tartt explore the philosophy of crime and justice. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History opens in medias res with a chilling recount of a group of classics students pushing a classmate off a precipice to his death. Similarly, Rope opens with Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan strangling an old friend and hiding the body as they prepare a dinner party. Though Tartt recounts the events that lead to the murder of Bunny Corcoran as well as the unsettling aftermath of the incident, Hitchcock explores the aftermath of the murder of David Kentley

and the measures to which his characters plan in an attempt to execute the perfect crime. Whereas, inspired by the words of an old professor driven by a philosophy similar to Nietzsche’s philosophy of the übermensch, and the idea of Murder as One of the Fine Arts borrowed from Thomas de Quincey, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan attempt to create the perfect crime to prove their superiority to the rest of the human race, the classicists of The Secret History murder out of fear for their own safety though it is approached in an extremely intellectual way. Both groups of young aesthetes meticulously plan their crimes but Rope attempts a step further and makes it a game to Brandon and, though less so, to Phillip. Littered with the philosophy of Nietzsche, de Quincey, Aristotle and Plato, each text’s author explores the idea of a perfect crime and the impossibility of escaping justice.
Though it could be argued that, as opposed to the characters of Rope, the classicists of The Secret History were able to commit the perfect crime, neither text ends without some form of justice being served for their crimes.

To the ancient Greeks, the ending of The Secret History shows natural justice through the miserable ends the group meets as Richard Papen narrates Charles’s alcoholism, Camilla being isolated with her elderly relations in Virginia, Henry’s suicide, Francis’s suicide attempt and arranged marriage, and his own ending – stuck back in a small Californian town with no money and no hope. In this, Tartt provides a different justice to Hitchcock, whose characters, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan, are caught with the body of their murdered classmate by their professor and turned into the police as the film reaches its conclusion. Both Hitchcock and Tartt explore the guilt as a consequence of crime through the characterisation of Phillip Morgan and Charles Macaulay. The effects of the murder are immediately obvious when both Charles and Phillip, both take to alcohol to steady their nerves and mask the depth of their guilt. Though over a more extensive period to Rope, The Secret History’s Charles Macaulay spends the aftermath of the murder spiralling into alcoholism to deal with his guilt. His drinking causes him to become increasingly violent and even abusive towards his sister, Camilla, in the latter half of the novel. Tartt explores how, as the most empathetic

character, Charles cannot deal with the crime he has committed and his coping, through alcohol, only serves as a means of blocking the memory of his role in Bunny’s murder. In this way, Hitchcock’s characterisation of Phillip Morgan is extremely similar. As the evening progresses Phillip is shown to be pouring champagne, brandy and whiskey more and more often with each mention of his victim’s name or mysterious disappearance. Like Charles, Phillip is also characterised as the more sensitive person out of himself and Brandon and the murder of David Kentley is an act which, though he commits the crime, he appears extremely unsettled by from the outset. Both texts explore the ramifications of crime through the characters of Charles Macaulay and Phillip Morgan, whose emotional distress causes then to turn to means of blocking out their guilt, and the justice delivered to the characters – both of the law and of nature – in the conclusion of the texts.
Through the role of the professors as inspiration and promoters of a superhuman philosophy, Donna Tartt and Alfred Hitchcock explore the philosophy of Nietzsche’s übermensch.

Tartt’s character of Julian Morrow holds a significant sway over the actions of the Greek class as all the pupils view him as a father figure - Henry Winter, the leader of the group, most especially. Similarly, Phillip Morgan and Brandon Shaw are influenced by their professor, Rupert Cadell, whose philosophy impacted heavily on their formative years. In both cases, it is not entirely the philosophy of their professors that leads to the murders but the influence of the characters Henry Winter and Brandon Shaw. Both Henry and Brandon revere their professors and take their word as gospel – a fault which leads them to extreme decisions and consequences. In the conclusion of each text, both professors discover the crimes of their students and are let down by the fact that their students, the ones they believed would be able to full grasp their philosophies, were unable to distinguish between a concept and

actions.
Both texts explore the art of murder and the beauty of bloodshed. Professor Julian Morrow of The Secret History questions the class on why scenes of horror and death are so memorable and breathtaking in classical texts, he is answered by Henry Winter with a theory from Aristotle’s Poetics: “objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art.” Julian agrees and claims this is because “beauty is terror” – a theory that presents itself time and again throughout the book, resurfacing at the death of Bunny Corcoran and the descriptions of the murder at the bacchanal. These scenes are described vividly and with rich imagery to leave memorable impression on the audience. In comparison, the normalcy of Rope’s visual palette is considerably more bland and thus the it depends on the descriptions of the art of murder given in the dialogue-driven film to convey the idea of Thomas de Quincey’s Murder as One of the Fine Arts. Though an ironically written essay, if taken seriously this essay holds true to the ideals of the characters of Rope, particularly Rupert Cadell and Brandon Shaw, and, similarly to the Aristotelian philosophy of The Secret History, this philosophy is carried throughout the film in what the characters discuss.