Classical ethical and tragic frameworks provide substantial evidence for interpreting Donna Tartt’s treatment of morality. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics offers a virtue-ethical model focused on moral character, habituation, and the pursuit of eudaimonia, which can be used to assess Tartt’s characters as morally flawed through sustained failures of temperance, honesty, and responsibility rather than isolated transgressions (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics). Similarly, Aristotle’s Poetics introduces concepts such as hamartia, hubris, and peripeteia, illuminating the characters’ intellectual pride and aesthetic elitism in The Secret History, which mirrors the moral blindness and downfall of classical tragic heroes (Aristotle, Poetics). Platonic philosophy further supports this reading: Plato’s warnings about mistaking beauty for goodness, particularly in The Republic and Symposium, resonate with Tartt’s depiction of characters who pursue aesthetic perfection at the expense of moral truth (Plato). Tartt’s own interviews reinforce the relevance of philosophical interpretations through her emphasis on guilt and long-term moral consequence, while her resistance to explicit moral judgement complicates strictly classical readings. Modern literary criticism builds on this by arguing that Tartt both invokes and destabilises classical structures, blending tragic form with psychological realism and modern moral ambiguity, suggesting that ancient frameworks are illuminating but ultimately limited (academic criticism, JSTOR/Google Scholar).