44 pages • 1 hour read
Jeanne DuPrauThe City of Ember
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2003A 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 17-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “Away”
Doon is worried about Lina and conflicted about leaving with such a dreadful lie afoot. Wanting his father to know the truth, he leaves a folded message on the community kiosk on his way to the Pipeworks: “Father—We have found the way out—it was in the Pipeworks after all! You will know about it tomorrow. Love, Doon” (227). He hears the Singing in the distance; shortly after the people of Ember begin “The Song of Darkness,” all goes black. He realizes he can run in the dark—once he lights his candle. The lights return as he arrives at the Pipeworks. Lina runs up with Poppy. She must carefully carry Poppy tied in her sweater like a sling as she descends the iron ladder. Doon and Lina manage to get the boat with its supply of candles, matches, and paddles into the water, secured by one of its ropes to a pin they find affixed to the riverbank. The water pulls and tugs at the vessel violently. Once they have boarded, Doon loosens the rope, and the boat races along the river pulled rapidly by the driving current.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Where the River Goes”
The tunnel at the end of the Pipeworks swallows them “like an enormous mouth” (238). For an unknown time, Lina can only desperately cling to Poppy and try to stay in the bottom of the boat as they race along. When the boat slows, Doon lights a candle; they are in a tunnel with curved walls and ceiling. The walls guide the boat along on a surface “nearly as smooth as a sheet of glass” (241). This opens to a wide cave where they bump into “lumpy” and strange-looking columns of rock; the current leads out into a rapids-filled expanse. Splashes extinguish their candles and they hold tightly to each other again until it is over.
Finally they arrive in a wide cavern with calm water. Water flows out through a small gap in the rock too narrow for any boat. Lina wades up a rocky bank and pokes about until she discovers a tight passageway that leads to a much wider path uphill. Before they climb the path, Poppy finds a strange book on the shore, but it is too hard to see. Lina explains to Doon that she realized she had to bring Poppy along out of danger. She tells how she found Mrs. Murdo after the Singing and took Poppy but didn’t explain. Suddenly, Lina realizes she never gave the note with the Instructions to Clary. Doon says he left a note for his father, but it includes no details nor instructions. Lina wonders if Clary might discover the egress since she knows the Instructions exist. They fill a bottle with water and begin the trek out.
Chapter 19 Summary: “A World of Light”
On a wall of stone, Lina and Doon find a note from the Builders behind glass. It welcomes them as “refugees” and says the walk out will take a number of hours. Heartened, they concentrate on the climb. They go through two candles; about to light a third, Lina realizes the path is lighter. They come to the end of the enclosed path and go outside.
They have no vocabulary for the lovely things they see under a nighttime sky: a hillside covered in grass (“like silvery hair”), a full moon (“a shining silver circle”), stars (“tiny flecks of light, strewn like spilled salt across the blackness”), and “a tumble of dark, rolling shapes” that are trees or shrubs (253). The wonderful smells and the moving air are notable to them; soon they realize the orb in the sky (the moon) is moving, and some time after that, the whole sky lightens. One spot in the distance where land meets sky is too bright to look at, and soon the sun rises high in the sky bringing light over all. The sky turns blue and as Lina marvels at the colors all around her, Poppy sees new creatures too big to be bugs flitting and flying and making music-like sound (birds). They investigate everything nearby in amazement. Doon finds so many bugs that “[he] just laugh[s] in helpless wonder” (257). They recall the book that Poppy found and sit to read it.
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Last Message”
Lina and Doon read several handwritten diary-style pages. The writer, an older woman, agreed to a government plan to try to save humanity. She relinquished everything she had; after training, she traveled far from her home to join a group of 50 men and 50 women. Each pair of one man and one woman took charge of two babies. These refugees left a dangerous, worsening world on the brink of some kind of annihilation. They were chosen for their habitation skills like farming, with the expectation that by the time the babies grew, the older generation would die off, leaving the new Emberites with no memory of the old world. The writer speculated that the safe harbor would be underground, but the men in charge gave no details about the destination. The men took the group of old people and babies into the cave, down the path, and up the river on motorboats to newly-constructed Ember. The pilot of the diary-writer’s boat tells her about the Instructions for Egress left for a future generation. The writer left the book on the shore.
Lina and Doon agree the lovely land looks undamaged now. They search about all morning for another way into Ember to lead the others out. They see a creature step out of some bushes and look at them, unafraid. Doon comments on a feeling of belonging to this world, though he never saw it before. Finding a crevice in the hillside, they squeeze through and walk along a narrow path by candlelight. At the end of the path, a massive expanse opens up, and at the bottom, they see light: Ember, at the bottom of a great pit underground. The discovery is mystifying. They know Ember is too distant to hear them, but Lina throws the note she forgot to deliver down to the city, wrapped in Doon’s shirt and weighted with a rock. Before throwing the note, Lina adds the news of their successful egress and a request to bring food.
Down in Ember, the note falls at Mrs. Murdo’s feet and she starts to open it.
Chapters 17-20 Analysis
Three ironies accompany the youngsters’ brave decision to leave Ember as fugitives during the climactic events at the annual Singing. First, instead of making a grand announcement to all of Ember at the Singing, Lina and Doon must use the Singing to cover their escape. Doon especially envisioned the moment of revealing secrets and saving Ember with great anticipation; earlier in the novel, he met sore disappointment with the realization that the generator’s woes were far beyond his mechanical capabilities. With the discovery of the Egress, Doon felt that he earned his moment of glory at last. He looked forward to the sight of his father, surprised but enormously proud, connecting his own son to the news that would save all of Ember. Doon never gets this opportunity thanks to the mayor’s and guards’ greed and fear, but is able to prioritize the future safety of all Emberites over his desire for glory.
Second, Lina makes a mature decision to bring Poppy with her but makes a childish error while distracted. Realizing that leaving Poppy behind is as dangerous to the baby’s welfare as the unknown journey ahead, Lina chases down Mrs. Murdo, claims Poppy, and races off again for Pipeworks—forgetting entirely about leaving their instructions with Clary, Mrs. Murdo, or anyone else trustworthy. Lina does not realize her mistake until it is too late.
Finally, although the worsening blackouts are one of the strongest indicators and symbols of Ember’s precipitous decline, it is the dark caused by a blackout that helps Lina and Doon on their way to leaving the doomed city. In the Singing blackout, Doon thinks to use a candle; because he does this, he is visible to Lina as she waits on the roof. Doon’s ability to bravely maneuver in the dark, his intention to follow through with their plan, and the majesty of all that they have discovered and intuited so far—these ideas stop Lina from shouting into the darkness and prompt her to collect Poppy before meeting Doon.
The journal Poppy finds in their escape is an important plot device; this new viewpoint both reveals mysteries and connects Lina and Doon, newly arrived into the outside world, with those who left it long, long ago. The woman who wrote the journal shares concerns about Ember similar to those of the assistant builder from the prologue, who worried the babies’ descendants would never know to leave. Lina and Doon fear that Clary, Father, Mrs. Murdo, and everyone else will never know how to get out without the Instructions. Just as the chief builder allays the concerns of his assistant, the boat pilot reassures the journal writer: “[…] when they need them, the Instructions will be there” (263). Thus, the journal connects the people of the city of Ember over great swaths of time. The pilot’s words prove prophetic, as Doon and Lina persevere in their attempt to find a secret way back to Ember, and they wind up tossing the instructions squarely at Mrs. Murdo’s feet.
