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Bunny (Edmund Corcoran)
Charles Macauley is the twin brother of Camilla Macauley, both of whom are Greek students. Of the Greek students, Charles and Camilla are Richard’s favorites, and he often spends time with them during his first semester at Hampden. Like the other Greek students, Charles plays a prominent role in Bunny’s death. While the authorities are looking for Bunny, Charles is regularly called in for questioning, a process he finds incredibly taxing. After Bunny’s body is found, Charles is racked with guilt and anxiety, which he copes with by drinking heavily. Toward the end of the novel, it is revealed that Charles is in an incestuous relationship with Camilla. After Bunny’s death, Camilla tells Richard that Charles regularly abused her, so she moved out of their shared apartment into a place that Henry is paying for. Enraged and paranoid, Charles thinks Henry is out to get him. Hoping to calm him down, Richard and Francis take Charles to Francis’s country house. However, while there, Charles overhears a phone conversation between Richard and Henry. He thinks that everyone is planning to murder him, so he runs away. Later, he shows up at Camilla’s apartment with a gun to shoot Henry. However, he fails and accidentally shoots Richard instead. After Henry’s death, everyone loses contact with Charles, though Camilla tells Richard and Francis that he is living in Texas with a woman he met in rehab and that he still drinks heavily.
Charles Macauley Quotes in The Secret History
The The Secret History quotes below are all either spoken by Charles Macauley or refer to Charles Macauley . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
And the horrible thing was, somehow, that I did know. “You killed somebody,” I said, “didn’t you?”
“Good for you,” he said. “You’re just as smart as I thought you were. I knew you’d figure it out, sooner or later, that’s what I’ve told the others all along.”
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Chapter 6
Quotes
“Well, they painted it with a dado, sort of, those awful Gucci stripes. It was in all kinds of magazines. House Beautiful had it in some ridiculous article they did on Whimsy in Decorating or some absurd idea—you know, where they tell you to paint a giant lobster or something on your bedroom celling and it’s supposed to be very witty and attractive.” He lit a cigarette. “I mean, that’s exactly the kind of people they are,” he said. “All surface. Bunny was the best of them by a long shot[. . .]”
Chapter 8
Quotes
Do you know how hard that was? Do you think Henry would lower himself to do something like that? No. It was all right, of course, for me to do it but he couldn’t be bothered. Those people had never seen anything like Henry in their lives. I’ll tell you the sort of thing he worried about. Like if he was carrying around the right book, if Homer would make a better impression than Thomas Aquinas.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Charles Macauley Quotes in The Secret History
The The Secret History quotes below are all either spoken by Charles Macauley or refer to Charles Macauley . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
And the horrible thing was, somehow, that I did know. “You killed somebody,” I said, “didn’t you?”
“Good for you,” he said. “You’re just as smart as I thought you were. I knew you’d figure it out, sooner or later, that’s what I’ve told the others all along.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6
Quotes
“Well, they painted it with a dado, sort of, those awful Gucci stripes. It was in all kinds of magazines. House Beautiful had it in some ridiculous article they did on Whimsy in Decorating or some absurd idea—you know, where they tell you to paint a giant lobster or something on your bedroom celling and it’s supposed to be very witty and attractive.” He lit a cigarette. “I mean, that’s exactly the kind of people they are,” he said. “All surface. Bunny was the best of them by a long shot[. . .]”
Chapter 8
Quotes
Do you know how hard that was? Do you think Henry would lower himself to do something like that? No. It was all right, of course, for me to do it but he couldn’t be bothered. Those people had never seen anything like Henry in their lives. I’ll tell you the sort of thing he worried about. Like if he was carrying around the right book, if Homer would make a better impression than Thomas Aquinas.
Related Characters:
Explanation and Analysis:
