Essay Questions

How does the novel represent hockey culture?

The entire novel centers around hockey culture and one town’s craze over this sport. Hockey is not just a sport, a hobby and entertainment in Beartown. Hockey is everything to Beartown and more, it represents hope, survival and pride. It comes before everything, as the novel shows, even before family and moral values, when a one girl’s truth threatens its survival. The entire town turns against Maya because with her confession of what happened with Kevin threatens the hockey team’s success, and with that, the entire survival of the town.

How does the novel portray the importance of parents’ role in their children’s lives?

The novel explores the theme of family and the importance of it, especially parents’ role in guiding and supporting their children. There are three key examples of this parent and children relationships and three different sets of values and opinions on parenthood. Maya’s family, faced with the terrible knowledge of what happened, are doing their best to cope with anger and fear of being unable to protect their children anywhere. Maya in turn feels guilty for causing them pain. Fatima and her son show the importance of a parent ingraining right moral values into their child, and reminding them to get on the right path when they are straying-Fatima reminds Amat of the true values of a man, and the importance of him coming out with the truth. Kevin’s family is on the opposite spectrum. It shows a cold and distant from each other family, set only on winning and succeeding, saving their face even when everything falls apart.

Why does the entire town blame Maya for what happened?

The entire town immediately starts blaming Maya for what happened, victim-shaming and scrutinizing her, while Kevin is perceived as a victim instead. This shows the ingrained misogyny, and the dark reality behind female victim blaming. Instead of shaming and questioning the perpetrator, the society shames and questions the female victim about her involvement, clarity of her “no” in the situation, the length of her skirt and depth of her cleavage.