The Hockey Sweater

This study guide will help you analyse the text “The Hockey Sweater” by Roch Carrier. We will show you examples of elements in the text that will be relevant for your analysis. In these notes, we will focus on summary, plot and structure, characterisation and themes.

Presentation of the text

Title: “The Hockey Sweater”

Author: Roch Carrier

Genre: Short Story

Year or publication: 1979

Roch Carrier is a Canadian writer whose literary works are studied in Canadian schools and universities. The short story “The Hockey Sweater” is one of Carrier’s most famous works. The story has been turned into an animated short film narrated by Roch Carrier himself.

Excerpt from the study guide:

Setting and time

Although the exact town is not depicted in the short story, we know that “The Hockey Sweater” was based on the author’s experience as a child. We can assume, then, that the town is supposed to be Sainte-Justine, Quebec, the place where the author lived.

We are presented the season since the very beginning: “The winter of my childhood were long, long seasons.” (p. 276, l. 1)

There are also three important places that the author depicts: “We lived in three places – the school, the church and the skating-rink – but our real life was on the skating-rink.” (p. 276, ll. 1-3)

As the story further tells us, the boy ...