Ghosts and Memories

We have perhaps reached a point in time where spiritual belief has been overcome by more secular attitudes. It is not surprising then that human curiosity for literal ghosts from parallel vicinities of the earth has been replaced by a fear of one’s past and memories. In The Secret History the students’ ghost is their memory of murder. A ghost they are unable to stifle.
 
It is often missed opportunity – or perhaps opportunities foolishly taken – that spawn ghostlike memories. As we are living in a time of greater opportunity it is not surprising that greater ghosts – secular, hidden ghosts – haunt us.
 
We have solved many of life’s mysteries. We now know what lies at the bottom of a lake, we have scientific explanations for diseases and ailments, we have lights that cut through literal darkness. All that remains for us to fear is ourselves. The only things we cannot change are past experiences, times already gone which haunt us. Since explorations into the last unknown – the mind – began the darkness in humankind itself has become the greatest threat to nations and empires.
 
Freud’s theories often addressed the human consciousness in terms of repressed memories, and experiences in which memory was linked to unconscious processes that could then be studied and understood. It is well understood that past memories and experiences cam, like ghosts, haunt and impair our present.
 
 Human nature seeks pleasure and avoids pain. This causes conflict within a persons mind and eventually leads to feelings of guilt. The conscious appreciation of the need to inhibit free expression and our instinctual drives is at the forefront of our social conscience. The majority of us strive to keep up some sort of appearance, and we may limit our actions to fulfil this. We have a strong concept of what is an acceptable reality and what remains suppressed within us. The students fail to feel guilty because of this lack of reality with which to compare their actions to. Their role model is Julian, who has taught them to remove themselves from the world, even from their fellow students and teaching staff. They are unaware of modern events, shocked to find out that man had already walked on the moon. There is no balance between reality and the freedom of the Dionysian spirit that they become enthralled with.

In most people the unconscious remains repressed, but dynamic, and is only at risk of re-emerging when inhibitions are reduced. This remains true for the students, they are very conscious of their image and their financial and educational status remains an important feature in their identities. The influence of Julian, and of the texts they are studying, means that while some inhibitions are maintained others are twisted and others still are completely discarded. The spiritual becomes part of their concept of the world. The presence of Dionysus and the presence of ghosts shapes their perceptions of their surroundings, leading them to actions which others may not therefore consider necessary or even normal.

 
This is not without consequence though. They become ghosts of people, they’re lives and friendships shadows of what they used to be. It seems that everyone involved – directly or indirectly – seem to have faded or sunk into nothingness. Detective Sciola appears in a ghostly form on television after death, ‘gaunt and Dantesque’. Richard panics, thinking he is seeing a ghost, ‘could a ghost embody itself through wavelengths, electronic dots, a picture tube? What are the dead anyway, but waves and energy?’ Camilla, who had perhaps been most touched by the events, whose beauty and intensity faded, her relationship with Charles disintegrated and Henry dead. Richard had ‘come to think of her, too, as a ghost’.
 
There seems to be a particularity between the genders in tales of ghosts. Females often act as mediums, to encourage or carry ghosts from one world to another. The female role is one of unity – or some supernatural association – with the ghost and nature. Throughout history we have seen that female experience of spirituality is a very different experience to that of a man, at least since Christianity.
 
Males seem to have a naturally different relationship with spirits. Often they are more aware of the physical presence of a spirit. Henry believes he sees Dionysus. The males in the group all see a white deer, while Camilla had the experience of being the deer. This is not only present in modern divine encounters. In Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus descends down to physical hell, to bring back his once physical – now ghostly – wife. But is unable to suspend his doubt and believe the promise of Persephone, instead turning around for physical evidence of his wife’s presence behind him.
 
Often then even a male perspective of a female can be ghostly, spiritual. Richard, upon meeting a girl at a party sees her ‘like an apparition, drinking red wine from a plastic cup and calling me by name.’ Camilla is a refreshing yet enigmatic figure amongst the males, almost all of whom have – or desire – sexual contact with her.
 
Gender and nature become a theme in the novel, as there are observable links between the seasons and events that occur, and the natural world has some affinity to the disposition of each character. For example trees seem to take a prominent part in the novel, as much perhaps as the characters themselves. The group hide in the trees before killing Bunny, the trees witnessed the killing of the farmer, Henry has an extensive knowledge of gardening and natural science. It is also useful to note Henry’s ability to read forgotten languages, his knowledge of ancient skills. He is known as an old Roman, living a life that is ‘stale and colourless. Dead’ waiting for the moment he can live without thinking. He is a ghost from a time past, unequipped for life in this world, but far removed from the world where he does belong. When he appears to Richard in a dream, he is not a literal ghosts still, but a memory, albeit an active one.
 
Trees can have ghostly features attributed to them. The dark, deep forest that sees all is a common element in fairytales and it is not missing in the narrative of The Secret History. Richard notes ‘‘Trees are schizophrenic now and beginning to lose control, enraged with the shock of their fiery new colours.’’ The change in the trees accompanies Richard’s increased involvement in the group, as he loses himself in his new environment. The irregular, changeable nature of the characters is corresponds to the turning of the leaves in autumn, leading into a cold winter. During these winters in The Secret History Richard has a near death experience and strange hallucinations, while living in the loft of the Mandolin Warehouse. Later Bunny lies dead in snow waiting to be discovered. In the same way Orpheus endured the ‘double death of his Eurydice’ and suffered throughout winter.
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Not only does nature link to important themes in the novel, but religion is equally as influencial. Richard was brought up with ‘no religious affiliation at all’, whereas ‘Bunny’s family was Episcopalian… Henry, Francis and the twins had been reared as Catholics.’ Religious background would no doubt affect the nature of their experiences, and their concept of spiritual encounters and sin.
 
When Bunny is sighted, after his murder, outside the bank in Vermont the students’ response is interesting. Has I been in their position I would have believed that anything was possible, yet Charles exclaims ‘That’s impossible’, Henry adds ‘Well, of course she didn’t see him’ to a troubled looking Charles.
 
They, seemingly, do not even consider the possibility of a ghostly sighting. Their experience of religion is very muddled, a eccentric mix between the paganism they study and the Christian values they have been reared with. They ignore Julian’s advice that it is ‘dangerous to ignore the existence of the irrational’.
 
Ovid speaks of ghosts as ‘bloodless spirits’. If we have only come to call ghosts by a different name – ‘Memory. The unconscious’ – then perhaps our understanding of bloodless has also changed, to a literal bloodlessness. This would fulfil our idea of ghosts as memories, something that lies repressed in our subconscious.
 
In the novel our male protagonist speaks of seeing the ghost of his ‘own reflection, a distorted reflection’. Ghosts in this sense then are not so much past memories as much as they are a distorted reflection of the ‘present’ that the thinker stands in. Which again links to the unreality of the students’ position, their alienation from what surrounds them and their evaluation of moral values.
 
The introduction to Book Two states ‘Dionysus [is] the Master of Illusions’ who could ‘enable his votaries to see the world as the world’s not’. This, again, raises the idea of distortion. The Secret History is told from after the events had occurred. Richard recounts the story from hindsight. The whole tale then is a ghost, memory. The story is almost ghostlike in style and in the interpretation of events. All the characters even Richard himself, appear like ghosts. Hallucinations not of this world but of the next.
 
Richard speaks of how his memories of Bunny’s murder posses more menace then the actual event, only ‘largely devoid of emotional power’. ‘An air of unreality’ mixed with their plans until murder ‘ceased to be a thing of the imagination and took on a horrible life of its own’. These memories are the ‘bloodless ghosts’ that Ovid speaks of. Bloodless – or figurative recollection – of the events, which haunt more then the actual event itself.
 
The youth of the students adds to this sense of unreality of a twisted perception of the world. Influenced by Julian and Henry, they are wrapped up in their own world. ‘When younger thought I was immortal’ says Richard, intensified by that toast, ‘always that same toast Live forever.’
 
To live forever is something we both desire and fear, especially once we live haunted by bloodless spirits of memories. Orpheus lives ‘aloof from the love of women’ until finally ‘a frenzied band of Thracian women’ tear him to pieces. His fate is very much similar to the farmer in The Secret History. We know little of the farmer, but no doubt he lived with his own ghosts, leading him towards his tragic death.
 
Bacchus does not let the death of Orpheus go unpunished, and likewise with the students. They go on to murder a friend, driven to do so by the threat of their own security. Their lives and friendships are fractured. In the same way the Thracian women are turned into trees, the students lives become wooden replicas of how they were. Bloodless memories of pleasurable times, turned depraved.
 
These ghosts lie distorted in the minds of the students shaping their lives, their dreams and twisting their realities. We can all relate to The Secret History. We all suffer from ‘bloodless sprits’ which others are unable to recognise or measure. We are familiar with Charles’ frustration when he angrily cries ‘It’s not a dream, it’s real.’ Throughout time all humankind has had experiences with ghosts, in the form of memories.