The Secret History

Richard opens Chapter 6 with the assessment that he does not consider himself “an evil person” (275) for participating in Bunny’s murder. He explains that the murder felt practical and necessary at the time, and that the degree of thought they put into it—spurred by Henry—helped the murder to feel possible and made it seem like “the easiest thing in the world” (277). After the five students leave the scene of Bunny’s murder, they review their alibi. As they talk, the April weather rapidly cools, and it begins to snow. Over the next few days, Richard experiences the first in a series of terrible nightmares that reoccur at intervals throughout the rest of the novel. In class, Julian is curious about Bunny’s absence. At first, Henry excuses his absence with the cold weather, but as the snowy days accumulate, Julian grows suspicious. After a few more days, Bunny’s friend Cloke Rayburn—popularly known as the Hampden College drug dealer—asks Richard about Bunny’s whereabouts and explains that Marion is trying to locate him. Cloke confides that recently, he has noticed that Bunny has had a lot of cash, and he worries that Bunny might have become involved in drug dealing. Cloke insinuates that something bad might have happened to Bunny in the course of a visit to one of his own connections in New York.