Bart Rangely

Character Analysis

Ah, to be thirteen. It's rarely easy, and Bart Rangely, Bullyville's thirteen-year-old narrator, is no exception. He's awkwardly straddling childhood and adulthood, old enough to get death threats at school but young enough to watch Saturday morning cartoons with his mother, with whom he's very close. As Bart tells us:

It was embarrassing to be thirteen and still watching cartoons with your mom […] At the same time, it felt good, it was comforting. Though I never would have told anyone, the truth was I really liked snuggling up next to Mom on the couch as the bright flashing images chased each other across the screen. (5.26)

Bart, then, is torn. He has one foot in the adult world and one foot in the world of kids, and this sense of being split is a key part of his struggle to navigate the loss of his father, his mom's depression, and the terrors that await him at school.

Ninety-Nine Problems

Bart is largely defined by his problems. Seriously—we really don't know much, for instance, about his interests and hobbies. It's all problems, all the time with Bart. Some of the issues he faces are pretty normal for his age group. He struggles to fit in, especially when he's forced to switch schools; he's bullied by students who are older and more popular than he is; he constantly worries about being perceived as a loser and has a hard time making friends. Classic awkward teen stuff.

What distinguishes Bart from most of his peers, though, is the caliber of problems he faces at home. Bart's father died in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Not only that, but six months before his death, Bart's dad moved out of the family home and in with his young mistress. Bart has had to keep the whole abandonment thing under wraps because his mother doesn't want other people to know, which only makes his father's death all the more complicated. Bart isn't just sad; he's angry, confused, isolated, and more. It's a lot for a kid to carry.

Bottle Up and Explode

Between his problems at home and his problems at school, Bart has a lot of feelings—and pretty much all of them are negative. Though he's close with his mom, he can't really tell her about the school stuff because he's afraid it will worry her. On top of that, Bart's warped sense of masculinity makes him feel as though he must tamp down all his emotions at all times. He tells us:

I got used to not talking about it, and after a while I sort of liked not talking about it […] It made me feel in control, grown-up. Manly. I thought that keeping my mouth shut was what Dad would have wanted. (3.12)

To make things worse, Bart has the selfless (if misguided) sense that he's protecting his mom from further emotional distress. Really, though, what Bart's trying to do is impossible—his feelings are too big for one person to hold inside forever.

See, deep down Bart's feelings are in conflict. He doesn't just have big feelings, he has messy ones, and throughout the book, the way he feels comes up against the way people think he should feel. For instance, everyone thinks Bart's just sad about his father's death, but he's also angry—which in turn makes him feel guilty. See what we mean? Complicated, for sure.

Bart also becomes something of a local celebrity after his father's death (his nickname is the "Miracle Boy"), but he feels like a fraud since the newspapers tell a version of his story that feels empty and false. He also resents getting a scholarship to Baileywell, even though everyone thinks he should be grateful. In pretty much every part of his life, then, Bart secretly feels differently than everyone around him expects him to.

Bart tries to repress these volatile emotions for as long as he can, but eventually they bubble up to the surface (feelings have a funny way of doing that). Unfortunately, the outlets he finds for his emotions tend to be inappropriate, and after Tyro pulls a particularly mean prank, Bart takes great pleasure in vandalizing Tyro's car. You know how we were saying that Bart's kind of a kid and kind of an adult? This makes this crystal clear: When he can't handle his feelings any longer, he lashes out impulsively, giving into them completely instead of taking a more mature approach.

Later, after Nola's death, he gets into a fistfight with Tyro. During the fight, Bart seems to cycle through every emotion he's tried to hold back throughout the rest of the book. He says:

Even as I was slugging away at Tyro, memories were coming back to me, all sorts of things I'd forgotten, that I hadn't let myself remember. (14.16)

Looks like someone can't suppress the world of pain living inside him any longer. Not that we blame him, per say; Bart's just a kid after all. It's just that in trying to be a mature young adult, Bart completely fails to recognize that the mature thing to do would be take responsibility for his feelings and seek a little support with navigating them. We're optimistic for him, though, since he demonstrates a bit of personal growth in the frank conversation about death he has with his mother at the end of the book. Bart's now capable of talking about his feelings… sometimes.