Beggars in Spain
57 pages • 1-hour read
Nancy KressBeggars in Spain
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2: “Sanctuary”
Book 2, Chapter 8 Summary
In 2051, around 20 years after the events of the previous Book, Leisha runs a successful law practice out of Chicago. Alice still lives in California, and her relationship with Leisha is somewhat strained, in part by Alice's enthusiasm for a pseudo-scientific organization known as the Twin Group, which tracks psychic connections between twins. Every day, Alice sends Leisha a bouquet of common flowers, as if to remind her sister that ordinary people matter too. Richard still lives in Sanctuary and is now married to Jennifer, with whom he has two Sleepless children, Ricky and Najla. For her part, Jennifer has become increasingly militant against the Sleeper community. Meanwhile, Alice's son Jordan lives in Mississippi and works for a man named Calvin Hawke who runs the We-Sleep scooter factory. The scooter factory is part of a broader We-Sleep movement in which Sleepers vow only to buy products made by Sleepers, a form of economic protest and organized resentment against the increasingly successful Sleepless class.
In an effort to mend relations between Sleeper and Sleepless, Leisha pays Hawke a visit to his factory, a meeting brokered by Jordan. She tells Hawke, “You—and all your followers in other industries—are splitting the country in two economically, Mr. Hawke, creating a dual economy based on hate” (106). Hawke isn't receptive to Leisha's arguments. In fact, his only reason for allowing Leisha to visit is to surreptitiously photograph their meeting and leak it to the press. A few days later, a prominent tabloid runs the photo on its front-page with the headline, “Sleepless Worried Enough to Investigate We-Sleep Movement.... Have We Got Them on the Run?” (121).
Leisha's next stop is Sanctuary in New York, which Jennifer still leads. Of the twenty-thousand Sleepless worldwide, 80% live in Sanctuary. Because few Sleeper parents wish to subject their children to intense anti-Sleepless sentiment, most new Sleepless are born naturally to Sleepless parents in Sanctuary.
The reason for Leisha's visit is that Kevin—who is now dating Leisha—leaked an oath of solidarity that Jennifer is requiring all Sleepless members to sign. Far from creating solidarity, Leisha believes the oath will only divide the Sleepless between those who support Jennifer's war against Sleepers and those who do not. Leisha asks Jennifer, “How can we advocate a single trade ecology for Sleeper and Sleepless if you split us into warring factions?” (118). Jennifer is unmoved.
Book 2, Chapter 9 Summary
Leisha receives a visit in her office from Dr. Adam Walcott, a researcher at the genetics firm Samplice. With the help of his assistant Dr. Timothy Herlinger, Walcott claims to have developed a gene therapy procedure to turn someone who is born a Sleeper into a Sleepless. Because his company Samplice is part-owned by Sleepless shareholders—and because Sleepless would have a huge incentive to sabotage his project—Walcott keeps his research off potentially-vulnerable computers. He also locks paper copies of his findings—all but the last few equations—in a safety deposit box at First National Bank. When he visits the bank that morning, he finds the box empty and his signature forged on the withdrawal receipt.
Leisha immediately suspects Jennifer of the theft, and when she confronts her, Jennifer calmly admits to doing so. Nevertheless, both Leisha and Jennifer know there is insufficient evidence tying her to the theft. Her admission of guilt, Leisha concludes, was simply a demonstration of arrogance for Leisha's benefit.
Book 2, Chapter 10 Summary
At her home in California, Alice celebrates her husband Beck's 50th birthday. Most of the people there are family and close friends like Leisha, Jordan, and Stella. Hawke also forces his way onto the guest list, which greatly perturbs Jordan.
On the way back from California, Leisha visits Susan who at 78 is now retired and living in New Mexico. She hands Susan Walcott's research notes which she had asked him to reproduce by hand. After a preliminary look, Susan agrees that his research may check out and that it's possible Sleepers really can be turned into Sleepless.
Back in Chicago, Leisha receives an urgent call from Kevin who tells her that Sanctuary has somehow broken into the U.S. Patent database and filed patents for Walcott's research, backdated weeks ago. What's more, Dr. Timothy Herlinger dies in an automobile accident after his scooter's deflection shields fail, in what Leisha suspects is an act of sabotage.
After the call, Richard tells Leisha he will testify in court against Jennifer about both the research theft and the falsification of federal patent records. When asked why, Richard tells her, “My kids—the hatred for Sleepers they're learning, the sense of entitlement to do anything—anything, Leisha—in the name of self-protection; it scares me” (151). What Richard doesn't realize is that Herlinger is dead, and Leisha doesn't just plan on turning Jennifer over to the U.S. Attorney for theft and records tampering, but also for murder.
Book 2, Chapter 11 Summary
Jennifer is arrested and kept in isolation until trial to prevent her suffering the same fate Tony did 20 years ago. Her lawyer is Will Sandaleros, a Sleepless who lives in Sanctuary.
Outside Leisha's apartment and around the country, anti-Sleepless protests reach a fever pitch over the news that a Sleepless is accused of murder. In turn, Leisha can no longer count on the few Sleepless allies she has left. Stella, for example, is angry with her for choosing to testify against a member of their community. Even Kevin tells her he is too busy to come home to their apartment. While he suggests returning to her when the trial is over, Leisha knows instinctively that their relationship is over.
Book 2, Chapter 12 Summary
In the days since the news of Jennifer's murder case breaks, average profits across We-Sleep affiliated industries soar by 74%, bringing “millions of new consumers under Hawke's rhetoric. 'I knew it!' We-Sleepers cried in triumph, fear, anger, and greed. “The Sleepless are afraid of us! They're spooked enough to try to control us through murder!'“ (163).
In celebration of this turn of events, Hawke throws a huge event on the Mississippi River called the Profit Faire. As Hawke talks to Jordan about his Aunt Leisha's outmoded 18th-century values like “rational thought, and a basic belief in the goodness of order” (164), a bomb explodes under the surface of the water, and the levee below Jordan cracks. Hawke leaps to save Jordan before he can fall. The explosion causes no deaths nor serious injuries.
As the media rushes to blame Sanctuary for the bombing, Jordan accuses Hawke of orchestrating the attack. In response to Jordan's outrage, Hawke asks if Jordan would like to see the victims of Yagaiism: infants without medical care and people without running water. While Jordan initially quits his job and walks out, he returns within minutes, haunted by Hawke's imagery of sick infants.
Book 2, Chapters 8-12 Analysis
Book 2 marks the next major step in Leisha's philosophical evolution and maturation. While her beliefs are still Yagaiist-adjacent, she is now far more akin to a traditional Enlightenment thinker, as Hawke points out to Jordan when he tells him Leisha “belongs to the eighteenth century, not the twenty-first” (162). Hawke brings this up to contrast Leisha's Enlightenment beliefs—in science, reason, and order—with his Romantic beliefs, which prize imagination, emotion, and revolution. While Leisha's devotion to reason and order are certainly consistent with her Yagaiist roots, where her Enlightenment values perhaps most differ from Yagaiism is in the idea of the social contract. Under the social contract theories of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—both of whom Hawke lists by name—an informal or tacit agreement with the people confers authority. This idea would seem to contradict Yagaiism, which prizes explicit contracts between individuals rather than tacit ones between individuals and institutions.
The differences between Leisha's and Hawke's political philosophies also appear in their views on social and economic equality. At Beck's party, Hawke says to her, “Lincoln said about the man who is denied economic equality: ‘When you have put him down and made it impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field […] are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you?’” (139). To which Leisha responds: “Do you know what Aristotle said about equality? ‘Equals revolt that they may become superior. Such is one state of mind that creates revolutions’” (139).
This exchange bears further elaboration as it speaks to one of the most important themes of the book: the politics of resentment. Aristotle's full quote was in fact, “Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior” (Aristotle. Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.). Lincoln's quote referred to those treated as inferior under the law, namely African-Americans in the South, but Hawke and the proponents of the We-Sleep Revolution are not slaves. While they may not be “equal” to the Sleepless in terms of intelligence or physiology, they are treated equally under the law. Therefore, Leisha suggests that their revolution is less about creating an egalitarian society and more about asserting their superiority over others. This is a common feature of Populist movements that have arisen over the past decade in the West, as well as various white nationalist movements whose members seek to reassert the superiority they believe they possess over other races. What all of these movements have in common—including We-Sleep—is that they feed off the resentment of self-identifying “ordinary people” against some other group, usually one they perceive to have ignored them or limited their opportunities for economic advancement. In this brief exchange, Leisha argues that Hawke's movement is driven not by a sincere belief in equality but rather a resentful desire to unseat the Sleepless from their elite position.
In the next chapter, however, the author offers a counterpoint to Leisha's point of view when Hawke tries to convince Jordan to stay after the Profit Faire explosion. Hawke offers a far more persuasive argument for the importance of the We-Sleep movement by leaning into the ways it presumably alleviates the suffering of the underclass by making jobs available to them. That's not to say Hawke legitimately cares about sick infants; it is likely he invokes them for the sole purpose of appealing to Jordan's sense of goodness and empathy. Nevertheless, if the We-Sleep Movement really does alleviate suffering for many poor Sleepers—and from the testimonies of various We-Sleep workers, it does—then do Hawke's motivations, resentful and hateful though they may be, really matter? It's a question the book raises but doesn't answer definitively. For it isn't Hawke's greed or hate or resentment that makes him Book 2's dominant antagonist, it's his crimes.
Unlock all 57 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs