69 pages • 2 hours read
The Winners
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Themes
The Effects of Trauma
The Winners presents characters who have undergone personal traumas, and it explores how traumatic events—even when they seem far in the past—can create present distress that unfolds in often unpredictable ways to impact an entire community. Beartown and Hed are densely populated with young people and teenagers, and much of the Beartown trilogy has focused on their growth, development, and interactions. Significantly, both Ruth and Maya were raped as young women; the sexual assaults caused both to move away from their hometowns, just like Benji did after he was bullied for being gay. The novel’s culmination—Matteo’s vengeance for the death of Ruth—flows from the crime committed against her.
However, the novel also shows that different characters respond to similar situation—similar traumas and similar shames—in opposing ways. The novel’s very structure, detailing the interactions between a large cast of characters, creates a framework for comparing the different responses between characters and exploring the elements that contribute to individual identities. Leo and Matteo are both young boys when their sisters are sexually assaulted, and both young men turn to violence as they struggle to cope with their emotions. However, Leo’s parents discover his behavior and intercede, protecting him from his own impulses. They give him the time, space, and attention he needs to process his emotions and find him other outlets. Matteo does not have these same protections. His parents’ religious idolatry leads to his isolation, trapped in attempts to satisfy his mother’s fantasies. With no friends or anyone to confide in, he nurses a desire for vengeance, deciding that it is better to die and accomplish his goals rather than live and make space for healing.
Peter and Teemu are both men who come from abusive backgrounds. Peter’s father drank heavily and was physically abusive; Teemu’s father abandoned his family when he was young, leaving him to essentially raise himself and his brother. Both men grew up in circumstances that required them to fight for their own survival, but they found different ways to fight and to channel their frustrations. Peter devoted himself to gaining skill in hockey, abstaining from alcohol and avoiding fights. Teemu instead transformed himself into a powerful social individual, taking control of the Pack and using his influence to change the future of Beartown and hockey. Ramona gave them as much safety as she could during her life, thus devastating them in her death. The vastly different outcomes of their lives demonstrate how underlying factors impact the way a person develops.
The appearance of such similar circumstances alongside nurture-specific scenarios underscores the idea that a loving environment can heal the wounds of violence and trauma. This is important for understanding what causes people to be the way that they are and for identifying how appropriate interventions can protect people from emotional and physical danger.
The Power of Rumor and Gossip
Rumor is defined as a circulating story that is of uncertain or doubtful truth, while gossip is defined as conversations about other people that involve unconfirmed details. Both rumor and gossip play a significant role in The Winners, helping perpetuate exclusionary ideologies and inspiring violence between Hed and Beartown. Many of the main characters also become the subject of rumor, leading to a disruption of their daily lives and emotional harm. Backman thus shows the power of rumor and gossip by highlighting the ways it hurts people and the ways it binds communities.
The youth of Beartown and Hed are frequently the subject of intense speculation, both for their personal lives and their impact on hockey. The gossip resulting from that speculation is one of the reasons why Benji is so hesitant to return to Beartown and only does so to attend Ramona’s funeral. His status as a gay man and former hockey player draws discussion, particularly centered on his decision to leave hockey. He feels that this makes him an outsider and a reject of the community he once loved, although the opposite proves to be true. Amat is the topic of much more recent discussion, as his recent fall from grace played out in the public eye. Being the subject of gossip led to a decrease in his mental health as he increasingly isolated himself from friends and teammates, as well as a decline in his physical health because he felt he could not confess the extent of his injuries and self-medicated to keep the pain at bay. Rumor led to his ostracization and self-exile that was only remediated in private moments with his teammates and loved ones. Gossip was thus negated through action, although its lingering effects on Amat’s psyche are seen throughout the book.
A much broader application of rumor and gossip is seen through the discovery and dissemination of the Beartown hockey fraud, as well as discussion of the hockey-club merger. The newspaper editor begins circulating this information when talking to Tails, leading to a wider inclusion of people to help mitigate the news of the fraud. This exposure also leads to more people learning of and discussing the club merger, heightening tensions between Beartown and Hed as each community focuses first on their mutual hate rather than their desire to remain independent. Rumor and gossip divide Peter and Kira, put Richard Theo in a position of power, and ultimately put Tails in jail as he claims full culpability of the fraud. Rumor is shown to have political consequences as well as the physical and emotional ones inflicted on the towns’ youth.
Overall, many of the novel’s events take place exclusively because of rumor and gossip. This underscores the importance of verifying information and ensuring that information is spread for its utility and not for malicious reasons.
Everything and Everyone is Connected
In the novel’s closing chapter, the narrator says that Alicia will one day become the best hockey player Beartown has ever seen, stating that every story that has been told in fact leads to the beginning of Alicia’s story. The last sentence of the novel is thus devoted to highlighting how every life is interconnected: Although the reader has been following the stories of Maya and Benji, it is from their stories that Alicia’s own will emerge. This closes the novel with the idea expressed in the beginning that everything and everyone is connected.
The first instance of such interconnection is seen following Ramona’s death. Her passing not only leads to a renewed friendship between Peter and Teemu but also causes significant strife between the two towns when a small memorial to her is accidentally vandalized during a shared hockey practice. This strife leads to even larger fights that strain the relationship between Hed and Beartown almost past the point of reconciliation. There is also a causal relationship between Ramona’s death and Benji’s: He dies only because he has returned home to attend her funeral. Ramona’s death sparks tension between Lev and members of the Beartown community as Lev insists on getting repayment for loans in the form of the Bearskin pub. Ramona’s death is the culmination of many of the novel’s tragedies, showing how grief inspires other grief. Backman centers on Ramona to also highlight how other emotions can be generated in times of deep sorrow, like anger and jealousy. Powerful emotions become the inception of equally powerful acts.
This level of connectivity also exists between people who do not actually meet within the novel. Maya and Ruth are two girls with many similarities; they are around the same age, they attend the same school, and they even both have little brothers and rebellious best friends. Ruth is assaulted several months before Maya is, but her efforts to go to the police for help are quickly squashed. When Ruth sees the response to Maya’s confession, she isolates herself even further, planning to flee Beartown at the soonest opportunity. It is this decision that leads to her death, filling Matteo with the joint helplessness and need for vengeance that fuels his later attack. The girls represent two different ends to the same story, ends that change based on the support they get from their loved ones.
Backman thus shows how actions and emotions create a web of consequences that effects everyone in its radius. The interweaving stories, the connected lives, of the characters who live in Beartown and Hed are shown to culminate in the novel’s climax, building to the rousing final chapter, where the narrative celebrates that these events were necessary to make people—the survivors—who they are as the past flows into the future.
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By Fredrik Backman
