Follow TV Tropes

Following

Literature / Mick Harte Was Here

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mick.jpg
Written in 1995 by Barbara Park, the story is told from the point of view of a girl named Phoebe Harte about her brother Mick. Specifically, how much the lives of herself and her parents have changed since his tragic death in a bicycling accident.

Tropes in this work:

  • All Deaths Final: Phoebe is forced to come to this when Mick dies.
  • An Aesop: Cyclists, wear a helmet!
  • Berserk Button: Phoebe understandably loses it and reads one of her classmates the riot act when he casually refers to her as "the sister of the dead kid".
  • Black Comedy: Sorta. While Mick's death itself is taken completely seriously by the narrative, he was a huge goofball when he was alive, and a lot of the book is about Phoebe remembering the hilarious things he did.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: At a bike safety assembly, Phoebe shows the audience three things that Mick was given by his family members and refused to wear — a glow-in-the-dark-bowtie with flamingos on it, a hat shaped like a trout, and his bike helmet. The audience laughs at the first two, and is shocked into Stunned Silence by the third.
  • Cheerful Funeral: At Mick's funeral, people take turns telling stories about funny things he did when he was alive. Phoebe comments to herself that God would probably rather hear people laughing in church than the crying and begging for forgiveness he hears so often.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Mick had some pretty bizarre thought processes. He once dressed as Thomas Crapper (inventor of the modern flush toilet) for Halloween, got suspended from choir practice from tap dancing on the piano, carried flyswatters everywhere in second grade to keep them from throwing up on his bread, and did a wild solo dance during the spring pageant in kindergarten because "the music got in his pants."
  • Collector of the Strange: Mick kept a lot of strange things on his bookshelves, including a lame autograph collection (that's just two signed scraps of paper in a plastic cover), a ceramic eyeball he made in art class, an "It's a girl!" baby shower cigar that he named Helen, and a set of fly swatters he called his "mobile field unit".
  • Companion Cube: Walking home from school one day, Mick picked up a cigar with a paper band on it that read "It's a girl!", the kind handed out at baby showers. He thought it meant the cigar was a girl, and he named it Helen.
  • Death by Newbery Medal: Mick's death and the aftermath are the focus of the entire book.
  • Death of a Child: Twelve-year-old Mick dies in a bike accident from not wearing his helmet, and his parents and sister are left behind to pick up the pieces.
  • Disease Bleach: As the family is in the car, on the way to the memorial service for Mick, Phoebe stares at the back of her mom's head and notices several strands of gray in her hair.
  • Distinction Without a Difference: When Mick freaks out over having worn a christening gown when he was a baby and yells at his mom, "You mean you took me to church in a dress?!" she tries to explain to him that it's a gown, not a dress. This does not help.
  • Downer Beginning: Mick dies in the opening chapters.
  • Elmer Fudd Syndrome: Mick understandably had this as a child. Hence the family dog was named "Wocket."
  • Embarrassingly Dresslike Outfit: A retroactive example. When Mick was eight, he was horrified to find out that he was once put in a christening gown as a baby and yelled at his mom for "taking him to church in a dress". He was so upset by it that he overcompensated by wearing a black motorcycle-themed shirt and camouflage pants every week to Sunday school for the rest of the year. Eventually, he started wearing it every day at regular school too. The school psychologist told his mom it was his way of balancing out the "trauma of being paraded around in public wearing ladies' sleepwear."
  • Fatal Flaw: Mick's vanity made him obsessed with not looking stupid in any way, which apparently started when his mother showed him the christening gown he wore as a baby and he lost his mind because she "took him to church in a dress." Unfortunately, this also extended to not wearing his bike helmet because he thought it made him look like a dork, and...
  • Helpless with Laughter: When Dad dragged Mick to his great-grandmother's funeral even though he begged not to go and made him look at the body, Mick was so nervous that when he noticed the lace handkerchief in her hand, he blurted out, "Do you think she'll be blowing her nose anytime soon?" and busted out laughing. Dad snapped his fingers at him really loud, but Mick couldn't stop laughing, so Dad kept snapping and snapping until "it sounded like he was keeping time to the funeral music that was being piped in over the loudspeaker." Finally Mom stopped it by grabbing Dad's hand and told Mick to wait outside until the ceremony was over.
  • How Dare You Die on Me!: Well, Yeah. We get it from Phoebe, her words are a bit harsher though.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Mick had one with Mr. Finnius the school janitor since kindergarten. At the boy's funeral, Mr. Finnius tells the story of how he once got Mick out of being stuck in a railing by smearing Crisco in his hair.
  • I Resemble That Remark!: Our main character remembers a comment on her first-grade report card that said, "Phoebe tends to be very rebellious at times," and then mentally adds to it, "I hated my first grade teacher, by the way. She tended to be an old bat at times."
  • I Warned You: When the family went to Great-grandmother Harte's funeral, Mick begged not to be forced to go because he felt guilty about not visiting her more, but his father forced him to, saying he had to confront his fears. At the funeral, Mick was so nervous he ended up busting out in hysterical laughter after seeing the lace hankie in his great-grandmother's hand. During the car ride home, Dad tried to scold him, but Mom stuck up for Mick and said that Dad shouldn't have made him go to the funeral if he said he wasn't ready.
  • Law of Disproportionate Response: When Mick was a kid, his and Phoebe's mom made the mistake of showing him his christening gown, decorated with lace and ribbons. Mick was so horrified at realizing that people had seen him in a dress when he was a baby that, for the rest of the year, the only thing he would wear to Sunday school—and then regular school—was a black shirt with a motorcycle on the front and a pair of Marines-style camouflage pants. By fourth grade, he became so picky about his clothing that Mom and Dad flipped a coin to see who had to take him to buy school clothes. (Dad came home with some of his hair pulled out.)
  • Meaningful Name: A kid named Mick Harte dies in a tragic accident, leaving his parents and sister with broken hearts.
  • A Mistake Is Born: Mick was a surprise baby, and loved teasing his parents that he was able to outsmart them and their birth control pills even before he was born.
    “Just imagine the amazing stunts I’ll pull when I’m a sneaky, rebellious teenager,” he’d say. Then he’d rub his hands together and throw his head way back and do that kind of creepy laugh that mad scientists do in the movies. You know, like “Muuwhaaaahahahahaha...” and he’d hunch over and limp out of the room like Igor or somebody.
  • Two Sane Women: Phoebe's best friend Zoe is there to help her through the trauma. Nana also helps by getting the family to eat together at the table without Mick.
  • Obsessively Organized: In Phoebe's words, her family "comes unglued if someone doesn’t follow the morning bathroom schedule."
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Phoebe's parents goes through this after Mick's death. The father is overwhelmed with emotions and guilt for not forcing Mick to wear his helmet. The mother won't say Mick's name around anyone and doesn't go to work for a while. And the family as a whole avoids eating together at the dinner table, where they would have to see Mick's empty chair. Phoebe gets the worst of it and goes through the stages of grief.
    "My mother was a zombie. My father was some slob in slipper socks. And I was a jolly little monster who got my kicks by tormenting Mom with my brother's name."
  • Outliving One's Offspring: Phoebe and Mick's parents lose their son at the age of 12 in a bike accident.
  • Safety Gear Is Cowardly: Mick had this attitude about his bicycle helmet, saying it made him look "like a dork". The author takes great pains to point out that he would have survived had he been wearing it. Such as on the back of the book.
    "If only he'd worn his bicycle helmet, he'd still be alive today."
  • Stress Vomit: Phoebe remembers Mick doing this the day after their dog Wocket died. After dinner, he automatically got up to put food in Wocket's bowl like he usually did, remembered, ran to the bathroom, and threw up.
  • Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: For a short period of time, Phoebe and her parents stop eating regularly after Mick's death.
  • Tragic Mistake: If Mick had worn his bike helmet, or if his parents had been just a little more strict about making him wear it, he would have lived.
  • Unperson: A Discussed Trope. After his dog, Wocket, died, Mick confessed to Phoebe that he was afraid of forgetting about her, because it would be like she was never there. So they went around the house finding pictures of Wocket and taped them to the mirror in Mick's room, and he would talk to them every morning, just like how he used to talk to Wocket. Phoebe thinks to herself that she never loved Mick more than when she heard him talking to those pictures.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Mick's mother once showed him his christening gown, which made him extremely upset when he found out people saw him as a baby wearing what amounted to a lacy white dress. He became obsessed with his appearance and refused to wear any article of clothing he thought made him look stupid, including his bike helmet, which led to him getting into a fatal accident.
  • Wet Cement Gag: One that comes with a Meaningful Echo, even. When they were little, Phoebe and Mick used a stick to write the word "fart" in a neighbor's concrete driveway. At the end of the book, Phoebe notices a freshly poured concrete sidewalk near the spot where her brother died, and uses a nearby stick to write in it, "Mick Harte was here."
  • Wham Line: When Mr. Harte gets home from the hospital after seeing Mick and Phoebe asks about her brother, he just pulls her close and whispers "He's gone."

Top