The City of Ember transports the reader to the titular city, Ember—which, unbeknownst to its residents, exists underground. The city, which has existed for over 200 years, is in crisis: power outages are becoming more frequent, while stores of food and supplies, especially light bulbs, are running low. Twelve-year-olds Lina and Doon formally come of age in this tense environment when, at the beginning of the novel, their schooling ends and they receive their job assignments, an indicator of adulthood in Ember. Despite having achieved this outward marker of adulthood, the novel goes to great lengths to show that neither Lina nor Doon are adults simply because they have jobs. Both are still children in fundamental ways—but, the novel suggests, both move more toward adulthood as they begin to stand up to authority figures and think for themselves.
Lina, the novel’s primary protagonist, filters most of the reader’s experience of Ember. Of the two protagonists, she’s also the one who undergoes the most significant change as she comes of age, as she begins the novel extremely idealistic about Ember’s future and her place in it. On Assignment Day, the day in which students receive their first work assignments, Lina is thrilled to become a contributing part of her city and to be able to explore all it has to offer. Though she’s distraught when she draws the job of Pipeworks laborer, her angst evaporates when Doon offers to trade her and give her the job of messenger that she actually wanted. This all builds up Lina as an individual who doesn’t necessarily see at first that there’s anything in Ember to push back against. While the assignment process may leave a lot to be desired as far as Lina is concerned, her narration reveals that she nevertheless understands that the jobs up for grabs in any given year are still jobs that are necessary for the city to continue functioning.
Doon, on the other hand, makes a scene on Assignment Day when he angrily tells Mayor Cole that Ember is failing and they need to take drastic action of some sort to save it from ruin. While this represents a degree of maturity and pragmatism that Lina doesn’t exhibit at this point in the novel, Doon also suffers from a similar unquestioning belief in the importance of being a Pipeworks laborer, a belief that is shattered on his first day of work. In this sense, both Lina and Doon begin the novel with uncritical beliefs regarding the importance of one aspect of Ember or another, something that the novel attributes to a combination of their youth and of the way that they were raised to not think critically about many aspects of life in Ember.
This lack of critical thinking proves to be the greatest indicator of Lina and Doon’s immaturity. When Lina and Doon begin making important discoveries about corruption, incompetence, and dangerous situations throughout Ember, they do what they’ve been taught to do and trust who they’ve been told to trust—the adults in their lives, and eventually Mayor Cole’s force of guards—to do the right thing and bring these things to their attention. While adults like the head gardener, Clary, and Doon’s father are supportive of Lina and Doon’s attempts to find a way out of the city and concerned about the corruption they uncover, it’s a major shock when it turns out that Mayor Cole’s guards are actually just as corrupt as he is, and that they’re out to help their boss, not the citizens of Ember. With this, Lina and Doon must come to terms with the fact that the authority figures they’ve been taught to trust and respect actually deserve neither of these things. The children also recognize that since Mayor Cole and the police force aren’t going to do anything about the power outages and food shortages plaguing Ember, it falls to them to learn whatever they can, critically consider their options, and ultimately, to come up with a plan to help the residents of Ember leave the city.
As the first in a series, The City of Ember doesn’t neatly tie up these loose ends or see Doon and Lina fully come of age. The novel ends when they discover the way out of Ember and, aboveground for the first time, discover a cave through which they can see Ember below and drop a letter explaining to whoever finds it how to lead everyone else out of the city. Most important to Lina and Doon’s coming of age, however, is that they discover they cannot trust authority figures to care for them or do the work of saving the city. Rather, as they come of age, they themselves must become citizens who are willing and able to step up, do the work, and become the trustworthy leaders that Ember needs.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Coming of Age ThemeTracker
Coming of Age Quotes in The City of Ember
“You haven’t forgotten the baby?”
“Oh, yes. She’s...I think she’s down in the shop.”
“By herself?” Lina stood up and ran down the stairs. She found Poppy sitting on the floor of the shop, enmeshed in a tangle of yellow yarn. As soon as she saw Lina, Poppy began to howl.
Lina picked her up and unwound the yarn, talking soothingly, though she was so upset that her fingers trembled. For Granny to forget the baby was dangerous.
Just recently, an official job called trash sifter had been created. Every day a team of people methodically sorted through the trash heaps in search of anything that might at all be useful. They’d come back with broken chair legs that could be used for repairing window frames [...] Lina hadn’t thought about it before, but now she wondered about the trash sifters. Were they there because Ember really was running out of everything?
Lina rather liked having Mrs. Murdo around—it was a bit like having a mother there. [...] When Mrs. Murdo was there, shoes got picked up and put away, spills were wiped off the furniture, and Poppy always had on clean clothes. Lina could relax when Mrs. Murdo was around. She knew things were taken care of.
Maybe she should show it to the mayor. She didn’t trust him, either. But if this document was important to the future of the city, he was the one who should know about it.
He found another supply closet at the far south end of the Pipeworks—at least, he assumed that’s what it was. It was at the end of a tunnel with a rope strung across it; a sign hanging from the rope said, “Caved In. No Entry.” Doon entered anyway, ducking under the rope. He found no sign of a cave-in, but there were no lights.
The blue-green room, the orderly apartment, the meals cooked, and the blankets tucked in cozily at night—all this gave her a feeling of comfort, almost luxury. She was grateful for Mrs. Murdo’s kindness. I am not ready yet to be alone in the world, she thought.
“And Lizzie—he isn’t just stealing things for you. He has a store! He steals things and sells them for huge prices!”
“He does not,” said Lizzie, but she looked worried.
“He does. I know because I bought something from him just a few weeks ago. He has a whole box of colored pencils.”
“If this were an ordinary situation, the mayor would be the one to tell.”
“But the mayor is the one committing the crime,” said Doon.
“So then we should tell the guards, I guess,” said Lina. “They’re next in authority next to the mayor. Though I don’t like them much, [...] Especially the chief guard.”
What was he thinking? If he still had light bulbs when everyone else in Ember had run out, would he enjoy sitting in his lit room while the rest of the city drowned in darkness? And when the power finally ran out for good, all his light bulbs would be useless. Possessions couldn’t save him—how could he have forgotten that?
For a moment, the fear he’d felt when he saw the guards was replaced by rage. The familiar hot wave rose in him, and he wanted to grab a handful of his father’s nails or pot shards and throw them against the wall. But all at once he remembered: if the guards were after him, they’d be after Lina, too. He had to warn her. He dashed down the stairs, his anger turning into power for his running feet.
“Because that’s what I suddenly realized on the roof of the Gathering Hall, Doon. I’d been thinking before that I had to leave Poppy because she’d be safe with Mrs. Murdo. But when the lights went out, I suddenly knew: There is no safety in Ember. Not for long. Not for anyone. I couldn’t leave her behind. Whatever happens to us now, it’s better than what’s going to happen there.”
Disaster seems very close. Everything will be all right, they tell us, but only a few people believe them. Why, if it’s going to be all right, do we see it getting worse every day?
And of course this plan is proof that they think the world is doomed.
