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
When Maya gets home from the hospital, she goes straight to sleep; she’s always coped with pain that way. Meanwhile, the Bears are fighting as hard as they can. Amat blocks shot after shot with his helmet. Bobo collapses in exhaustion. Benji seems to be everywhere at once, playing through pain. But at the end of the game, it’s 3-3, and in the overtime period, they can’t hold out against their opponents or break through their defense.
Everyone is enduring pain in their own way. Maya continues dealing with the pain and weariness of her assault and its aftermath. In a much different way, the Bears end up confronting an insurmountable barrier in their opponents. No matter how fierce their effort, they ultimately can’t overcome them.
Themes
The Bears’s locker room is crushed and silent. Eventually, David appears with a bag full of pucks. He hands one to each player. Some smile when they see what’s written on the pucks, and some cry: written on each puck is “Thank you.”
Even though David is all about winning, that doesn’t stop him from honoring an admirable effort and expressing his love for his players in his own reticent way. This moment hints that hockey culture doesn’t have to be as toxic as it often is.
Themes
Benji lingers on the ice for a long time and, once he makes it back to the locker room, he can’t get his skates off. Bobo comes out to the parking lot to find Gaby. When she comes inside to help, she discovers that Benji skated the entire third period and overtime with a broken foot.
Benji’s effort in the game becomes even more astonishing when everyone realizes he’d been skating with an injury, literally bearing pain for his teammates’ sake.
Themes
While Maya naps, Ana sits by her bed and anxiously scrolls through social media, waiting for the moment when everyone finds out what happened.
Ana is bearing a burden for Maya, too—waiting to do battle for her against the town, anticipating what kinds of things will be written about her once the news is out.
Themes
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Though the team has the option of staying overnight in Hed, they all decide to return to Beartown to be there when Kevin is released. On the way home on the bus, people begin hearing the news about what happened. They protest that Maya was clearly the one who’d been going after Kevin; the accusation is “bullshit.” Back in Beartown, Leo awakens to the sound of Ana smashing a computer against the wall.
Once they hear what happened, the players quickly rally to Kevin, again emphasizing how being a hockey star makes an individual seem completely faultless. Meanwhile, The nature of the town’s comments about Maya can be guessed from Ana’s violent reaction.
Themes
