60 pages • 2 hours read
Stacey AbramsWhile Justice Sleeps
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Chess
Chess is a symbol that appears repeatedly throughout the work. Practically speaking, chess helps drive the plot, as the judge leaves Avery many chess-relevant clues. For example, she is able to connect with Ani via the Chessdynamo online game platform. However, chess also symbolizes the trickery, treachery, and strategic approaches that underlie many of the power struggles and political games that Justice Wynn criticizes and, through Avery, hopes to bring to light. Chess is highly strategic, requiring awareness of one’s own moves as well as one’s opponent’s. The emphasis on games critiques many of the power struggles seen in the book. For example, President Stokes has the foresight to recognize that if the GenWorks-Advar merger happens, his own involvement in the Tigris Project will be exposed—and acts accordingly.
Chess is immediately alluded to in the Prologue, when Justice Wynn tells Jamie, “In the middle game, both bishops will die to save him. To save the endgame” (9). The Prologue mentions a chessboard in Justice Wynn’s home, and he uses chess-related language like “King’s gambit” (8). His reference to the famous Lasker-Bauer chess game is later elucidated, as it’s revealed that, in the game, the player Lasker sacrificed two key pieces: the bishops, on the board, which ultimately allowed him to win. It’s ultimately revealed that the “bishops” in the real-life game of chess Avery (who functions as a Lasker figure) is playing are Justice Wynn and Ani.
The Media
The media in While Justice Sleeps represents the trickle-down nature of corruption from the upper echelons of power. One wants to believe in a free and objective media, but, the book argues, this is probably a fantasy. This is seen most poignantly when President Stokes tells Vance they will have to “fully discredit” Avery if she can’t be bribed and shortly after, the Washington Gazette publishes a salacious headline about Avery calling both her career and her personal life into question. Clearly, the president’s team has some influence over the media. Justice Wynn also articulates the book’s argument that the idea of a free press may be an illusion when he dismisses the media as a form of “willful ignorance” (1), implying that it can be persuaded to overdramatize or look the other way for its own gain. These words crystallize the symbiotic (and corrupt) relationship between politics and media.
Rivers
The motif of the river appears repeatedly in the book, starting with Justice Wynn’s final words: “Tell her to look to the East for answers. Look to the river. In between. Look in the square. Lask. Bauer. Forgive me” (12). The clue regarding the “river” is alluded to again and again, for example when Avery looks at Justice Wynn’s emails and finds one with the cryptic subject line “Ani Is in the River” (71). The “river” is ultimately revealed to signify “Tigris,” the code name of the Hygeia experiment—and the name of a famous river. With the Euphrates, the Tigris creates a network of rivers, forming an area known as the Fertile Crescent. The Tigris has long served as a critical source of irrigation and is historically credited with helping to foster early agricultural civilizations. It’s thus ironic that “Tigris,” formerly a symbol of nurturing life, has been used as the name for the Hygeia project—which could be seen as the death knell of humankind, much in the same way the development of nuclear weapons was once seen as the death knell of humankind. The parallel between Tigris and nuclear weapons is even drawn directly when Tigris is described as “a brilliant plan that would dwarf the Manhattan Project” (65), which resulted in the development of the first nuclear weapons.
