88 pages • 2 hours read
Jeanne DuPrauThe People of Sparks
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 1, Chapters 5-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Arrival”
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “The Pioneer”
Doon travels with the rest of the Emberites to The Pioneer Hotel. Doon is eager to learn and grow as much as he can. As the Emberites are shown around the hotel, a young man named Tick Hassler heckles Ben, complaining about their living and eating arrangements. Everyone chooses rooms and settles in as best they can. That night, Doon is too excited about the new world to sleep.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Breakfast with Disaster”
At Dr. Hester’s house, Lina gets up early. Torren continues to act hostile toward her, and Lina fights back. Their disagreement culminates with Torren shoving Lina and her throwing the only egg for the day at him. After breakfast, Torren gleefully tells Lina about the Disaster. He recounts that there were four wars and three plagues, resulting in the near-end of civilization. Lina is confused by the concept of war. Poppy’s health begins to improve.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “A Day of New People”
Doon and the rest of the Emberites are split up into work teams who will eat lunch at a local family’s house. They are tasked with much harder work than any of the Emberites are used to. Doon’s group eats a tense meal with the Parton family; both the Emberites and the people of Sparks think the things that make their hometowns unique make them better. Doon connects with Kenny, the Parton’s young son. Doon appreciates the attention, but feels Kenny is too young to merit friendship. After the end of the workday, Tick Hassler comes to ask for Doon’s help in fixing up the hotel. Much like Kenny, Doon relishes the attention from the older boy.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Roamer and the Bike”
Lina spends the morning doing chores for Dr. Hester. She is shocked by the disorganization in Sparks; it’s a stark comparison to life in Ember. Lina goes to the plaza to buy from a roamer, someone who combs the Empty Lands to find resources. The townspeople barter worn-but-still-useful items for necessities and pass over novelties like jewelry. Throughout it all, Dr. Hester is too distracted to pay any attention to Torren. Later, Lina finds a bicycle and teaches herself how to ride it. Thrilled with her new skill but feeling lonely, she visits Doon at The Pioneer. Doon is preoccupied with Tick and his new friends, and Lina leaves, feeling lonelier than before.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary: “Hard, Hungry Work”
Doon and the other Emberites continue to do manual labor. They tire quickly because of the heat. Doon enjoys the feeling of growing into himself. Kenny shows Doon a chaotic stash of books in The Ark, Sparks’ food storehouse. Doon is excited by the knowledge available to him and chooses books at random; a book of science experiments is among his picks. The Emberites begin to feel the impending food shortages, and Tick encourages them to complain to their host families. However, these food shortages are affecting the people of Sparks as well. Tensions rise as neither group has enough to eat, and both believe they deserve more.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary: “Restless Weeks”
Lina feels stifled by the repetition of her chores and misses her important job of messenger back in Ember. She can no longer find the same joy and escapism as she used to in drawing. Torren shows her the collection of “extinct” things that his brother Caspar has given him: toy vehicles, model animals, and broken technology. Lina struggles to conceptualize what the pre-Disaster world must have been like.
There are several conflicts between Emberites and people of Sparks stemming from a lack of shared knowledge. Lina goes to visit Doon again, but their connection is different now. He is enjoying finding his place in the new world while Lina is struggling to find hers.
Part 1, Chapters 5-10 Analysis
The people of Ember have begun to settle into their new lives in Sparks, though it is proving to be a challenge. These chapters introduce another main character and show the deepening divide between the people of Sparks and the people of Ember.
Doon and most of the other laborers have never done manual labor before, so they are constantly tired and sore. The lack of food exacerbates this problem. As one Emberite puts it, “I don’t know how they think we can work, with nothing but scraps to eat” (113). Their need for frequent rest allows the people of Sparks to denigrate them and separate the two populations.
Lina is bored and frustrated by the housework that Dr. Hester has her doing; she feels that her job of messenger back in Ember allowed her more agency and more of an identity. She thinks that “[e]verything here seemed extremely inconvenient” (92). This problem seems to plague many of the Emberites; the work that they have to do to keep Sparks running seems menial compared to the work that they did in Ember, where all the “heavy lifting” had been done for them by the founders. Many of the Emberites are therefore left feeling unfulfilled, misunderstood, and out of place. This provides fertile ground for Tick’s ideas about dissatisfaction and rebellion to take root in later chapters.
Lina and Torren’s relationship mirrors that of Ember and Sparks. Lina is occupying territory that Torren wants (she, Poppy, and Mrs. Murdo are sleeping in his bedroom), and he feels that she is stealing resources from him (the best room, the best food, and the little attention that Dr. Hester has to spare). In response, he takes his aggression out on her. Lina, bewildered by his behavior, responds in kind; this culminates most notably in the egg-throwing incident in this section of the book. Dr. Hester, seemingly referring to more than just the lost egg and Torren’s dirty shirt, says “[t]hat’s how it goes, doesn’t it? Someone pushes, someone pushes back. Pretty soon everything’s ruined” (66). Like the incident at breakfast, violence and aggression in response to violence and aggression ultimately achieves nothing, and both parties lose out on precious resources.
These chapters introduce Tick Hassler, a major character and the novel’s most evident antagonist. He is first seen arguing with one of the leaders of Sparks, cementing his role as troublemaker at best. As a foil to Doon, his ideas begin to influence several of the Emberites, encouraging them to view their hosts in a negative light.
