Once and always: Friendship, hauntology and madness in "The Secret History" and "If We Were Villains"

The present thesis aims to explore and compare the concepts of friendship, hauntology and madness in two significant novels of the Dark Academia genre: The Secret History by Donna Tartt and If We Were Villains by M.L Rio. In the examination of the selected novels, this thesis displays the disintegration of friendship in the face of a tragic event like murder. Murder, as the collective doing of the friends, starts to haunt every aspect of their lives and becomes the trigger for frenzy of behaviour with lethal consequences. Considering the significance of friendship in college years, analyzing the concept of friendship in both novels is crucial in that the events which take place on the college campus have a role in shaping the characters' future life. The Secret History and If We Were Villains provide the reader with a window to observe how a close-knit group of friends reaches the level of murdering one of their own. In order to explain the nature of friendship in the two novels, this thesis builds its theoretical framework mainly on the ideas of Derrida and Arendt. Along with the literary critics such as Mark Fisher and Katy Shaw, Derrida's concept of "hauntology" is employed to explain the alteration of friendship and the repercussions of murder on the protagonists because the more they become haunted by the act they have committed, the darker the events become for them. The protagonists' behaviours in madness not only constitute a trigger in the series of events but also reflect their perception of the world. The conceptual approach utilizing madness in the present thesis centres predominantly on the literary theories of Foucault and Nietzsche.