Summary
Richard spent several weeks in hospital recovering from the gunshot wound, missing Henry's funeral as a result. The story is that Henry was suicidal, Richard tried to get the gun away and was shot in the process, and then Henry killed himself anyways.
When Richard recovered, he spent the summer housesitting in Brooklyn and then returned to Hampden in the fall, switching his major to English literature. None of the other students returned: Charles and Camilla stayed in Virginia, and Francis stayed in New York. Gradually, Richard had less and less contact with them.
Richard ended up dating Sophie, a fellow Hampden student whom he had first met at Bunny's funeral. After graduation, Richard and Sophie moved back to California together, where he went to graduate school to study Jacobean tragedy and she had a job as a dancer. However, they broke up a short time later.
While Richard was studying in California, he received a letter from Francis, clearly indicating Francis's intention to commit suicide. Richard rushed to Boston, where Francis was in hospital, recovering from having tried to kill himself. Francis explained that he had hidden his identity as a gay man from his conservative family, but his grandfather had found out and threatened to cut Francis off financially unless Francis married a woman. Francis reluctantly got engaged, but the strain of the secrecy led to his suicide attempt.
Camilla joined them (she had also received a letter from Francis) and the three friends spent several days together in Boston. Camilla explained that Charles had continued to struggle with alcoholism, and had gone to rehab. He met a woman there, and the two of them have been living in a small town in Texas. Charles and Camilla no longer had contact.
Before he left Boston, Richard proposed to Camilla but she turned him down. Camilla had devoted her whole life to taking care of her sick and elderly aunt. She also explained that she still loves Henry. Distraught, Richard parted from Camilla and drove back to California alone.
At the end of the novel, Richard provides updates on the lives of various minor characters in the novel. Julian had never been in contact with any of his students, and had declined to attend Henry's funeral. Francis went ahead with marrying his fiancée, and lives with her in New York. Finally, Richard recounts a dream in which he meets with Henry in some sort of underworld or afterlife. Henry seems trapped in some sort of limbo, and acknowledges that he is unhappy, but also points out that Richard is not happy either.
Analysis
Henry's death completes the disintegration of the clique, which had been gradually fragmenting ever since the bacchanal ritual. Although Richard's experience of Hampden College at first seemed inseparable from the influence of Julian and the other Greek students, he ends up completing the rest of his education in a much more ordinary fashion. Richard's lack of description of this period of his life shows that it was not particularly influential for him; as he notes, his identity was so strongly formed during his first year at Hampden that there was almost no room for him to change or grow after that. Richard's relationship with Sophie at first seems like it might be a step forward: a romantic relationship could signal that he is stepping into a kind of adult maturity, and developing emotional intimacy with someone who does not know anything about his dark past. However, the relationship fails because Richard is not capable of moving forward; he is trapped by his secrets, and can't be close to anyone who doesn't know them.
Likewise, Richard's subsequent academic work shows a preoccupation with the past more than a move towards a new future. The Jacobean tragedies which he studies are deeply indebted to Classical tragedy, and have themes of jealousy, murder, and violent death. Richard's preoccupation with these texts shows that he continues to dwell on the traumatic events of his time at Hampden. The unbroken and unending guilt reveals that while on the surface, Richard and the other have gotten away with their crime, they are actually experiencing perhaps the most excruciating type of punishment because they must live with it forever in their own minds. As Francois Pauw writes, "In fact, the psychological disintegration of the five guilty students is probably even more excruciating than the physical dismemberment of Pentheus [a character in a Greek tragedy]: the latter's gory demise [has] a terminus, whereas the suffering of Richard and his friends has a Sisyphean quality to it" (149). Sisyphus was a character in Greek mythology who was condemned to a punishment of perpetually trying to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it slide down. This oppressive and neverending repetition perfectly captures the cycle of trauma that Richard is ensnared in.
Francis, Camilla, and Charles are all haunted in various ways by their past, and they become even more strikingly frozen in the past. Because Richard does not have family money, he has to maintain at least the guise of moving forward with his life, completing his degree and going on to graduate school, presumably with the goal of eventually working as a professor. Charles, Camilla, and Francis never live up to their intellectual potential, and don't even complete their degrees.
Camilla, most strikingly, seems to commit to a life of seclusion and self-abnegation, living in isolation and taking care of her aunt. While her inner thoughts are not revealed, it seems that Camilla might be punishing herself for her role in the conflict between Charles and Henry, and Henry's death. Strikingly, when Camilla turns down Richard's proposal, she cites her loyalty to Henry. The others might be trapped by guilt, but Camilla is also trapped by love. She can't move forward, or attempt to build a relationship with anyone else.
The theme of being frozen in the past is most strikingly exemplified by Richard's dream of Henry. Henry seems to be stuck in some sort of limbo-like state, mentioning that he has trouble with his passport and can't move about. This odd comment might reflect Richard's subconscious feeling of being restricted, and unable to move forward with his life due to being trapped in the past. The comment might also reflect the role Henry occupies, because he is still such a vivid presence for his friends. Various mythologies suggest that ghosts or souls linger until their loss is accepted, and they can be released. Henry continues to have a liminal, ghostly kind of existence because he occupies such a strong place in Richard's life. Ultimately, Richard is living a life that is just as ghostly as the one he imagines for Henry. He is barely real, and untethered from the present because he can only find meaning in the past.
