Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beartown, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Community Breakdown and Inequality
Culture, Character, and Entitlement
Parents and Children
Loyalty and Belonging
Resistance and Courage
Summary
Analysis
One late March evening, a teenager walks into the forest with a double-barreled shotgun, puts the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulls the trigger. This novel is “the story of how we got there.”
Backman reveals the story’s climax at the very beginning of the novel, but he doesn’t provide any context, thereby creating suspense—all the reader knows is that the novel will involve a crisis between teenagers, presumably leading to someone getting killed.
Themes
