The City of Ember

Key Takeaways

Light-engagement read; no marginalia to synthesize.

Connections

No cross-book interconnections identified yet.

Highlights

• The box ended up at the back of a closet, shoved behind some old bags and bundles. There it sat, unnoticed, year after year, until its time arrived, and the lock quietly clicked open.
• In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark. The only light came from great flood lamps mounted on the buildings and at the tops of poles in the middle of the larger squares.
• The city of Ember was old, and everything in it, including the power lines, was in need of repair. So now and then the lights would flicker and go out. These were terrible moments for the people of Ember.
• “Will you trade with me?” he asked. “Trade?” “Trade jobs. I don’t want to waste my time being a messenger. I want to help save the city, not run around carrying gossip.” Lina gaped at him. “You’d rather be in the Pipeworks?” “Electrician’s helper is what I wanted,” Doon said. “But Chet won’t trade, of course. Pipeworks is second best.” “But why?” “Because the generator is in the Pipeworks,” said Doon. Lina knew about the generator, of course. In some mysterious way, it turned the running of the river into power for the city. You could feel its deep rumble when you stood in Plummer Square. “I need to see the generator,” Doon said. “I have…I have ideas about it.”
• She darted around obstacles—broken furniture left for the trash heaps or for scavengers, stoves and refrigerators that were past repair, peddlers sitting on the pavement with their wares spread out around them. She leapt over cracks and potholes.
• It was a small apartment, only four rooms, but there was enough stuff in it to fill twenty. There were things that had belonged to Lina’s parents, her grandparents, and even their grandparents—old, broken, cracked, threadbare things that had been patched and repaired dozens or hundreds of times. People in Ember rarely threw anything away. They made the best possible use of what they had.
• It seemed to Lina there were more Believers than ever these days. What they believed in she didn’t know, but it must make them happy—they were always smiling.
• She bent over The Book of the City of Ember and read a few sentences: “The citizens of Ember may not have luxuries, but the foresight of the Builders, who filled the storerooms at the beginning of time, has ensured that they will always have enough, and enough is all that a person of wisdom needs.”
• With wrenches, hammers, washers, and black goop, they did this, getting soaked in the process. It took them most of the morning and proved to Doon that the city was in even worse shape than he’d suspected. Not only were the lights about to fail and the supplies about to run out, but the water system was breaking down. The whole city was crumbling, and what was anyone doing about it?
• He was proud of his mechanical talent. There was only one thing he didn’t understand at all, and that was electricity. What was the power that ran through the wires and into the light bulbs? Where did it come from?
• But this monstrous roaring thing—he wondered if anyone understood how it worked. It looked as if all they were doing was trying to keep it from flying apart.
• “Can you explain to me about the generator?” he asked. “Can you tell me how it works?” The old man just sighed. “All I know is, the river makes it go.” “But how?” The man shrugged. “Who knows? Our job is just to keep it from breaking down. If a part breaks, we got to put on a new one. If a part freezes up, we got to oil it.” He wiped his hand wearily across his forehead, leaving a streak of black grease. “I been working on the generator for twenty years. It’s always managed to chug along, but this year…I don’t know. The thing seems to break down every couple minutes.” He cracked a wry smile. “Of course, I hear we might run out of light bulbs before that, and then it won’t matter if the generator works or not.”
• But how could she be so lighthearted when everything was falling apart?
• He’d been stupid to think he could understand the generator just by looking at it, when other people had been working on it their entire lives. The thing was, he had to admit, he’d always thought he was smarter than other people. He’d been sure he could learn about electricity and help save the city. He wanted to be the one to do it.
• All Doon’s life, his father had been saying to him, “You’re a good boy and a smart boy. You’ll do grand things someday, I know you will.” But Doon hadn’t done much that was grand so far. He ached to do something truly important, like finding the secret of electricity, and, as his father watched, be rewarded for his achievement.
• But the Pipeworks is your assignment, no way around it. What you get is what you get. What you do with what you get, though…that’s more the point, wouldn’t you say?”
• The main thing is to pay attention. Pay close attention to everything, notice what no one else notices. Then you’ll know what no one else knows, and that’s always useful.”
• Doon had always been fascinated by bugs. He wrote down his observations about them in a book he had titled Crawling and Flying Things.
• “Maybe,” said Doon. But to himself he said, No, that’s not enough. I can’t go plodding around the Pipeworks, stopping up leaks, looking for bugs, and pretending there’s no emergency. I have to find something important down there, something that’s going to help. I have to. I just have to.
• 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?
• In days past, the machines themselves had whirled the clothes around, but not one of them worked anymore.
• “Father,” said Doon as they hurried along, “the mayor is a fool, don’t you think?” For a moment his father didn’t answer. Then he said, “He’s in a tough spot, son. What would you have him do?” “Not lie, at least,” Doon said. “If he really has a solution, he should have told us. He shouldn’t pretend he has solutions when he doesn’t.” Doon’s father smiled. “That would be a good start,” he agreed.
• The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of you. And then you aren’t the master of yourself anymore. Anger is.”
• “Help is coming,” she said. “Help?” “Yes. Coming to save us.” “Who is?” Captain Fleery bent down and lowered her voice, as if telling a secret. “Who built our city, dear?” “The Builders,” said Lina. “That’s right. And the Builders will come again and show us the way.” “They will?” “Very soon,” said Captain Fleery. “How do you know?” Captain Fleery straightened up again and clapped a hand over her heart. “I know it here,” she said. “And I have seen it in a dream. So have all of us, all the Believers.”
• But these tours had been discontinued long before Lina was born. The storerooms, people said, were no longer a pleasure to look at. Their dusty shelves stood mostly empty now. It was rumored that in some rooms nothing was left at all.
• That was one thing, at least, that she liked about Doon: he was curious. He paid attention to things.
• Unintended consequences, he thought miserably. He was angry at his anger, the way it surged up and took over. He picked the bits of shell and goo off the sole of his boot and thought, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.
• The generator was hopeless. He would never understand electricity. He used to think he could use electricity to invent a movable light, if he studied hard enough. He took apart light bulbs; he took apart the electric outlets on the wall to see how the wires inside wound together and, in the process, got a painful, vibrating jolt all through his body. But when he tried to wind wires of his own together in exactly the same way, nothing happened. It was what came through the wires that made the light, he finally understood, and he had no idea what that was.
• These were the books of Ember, written over the years by its citizens. They contained in their close-written pages much that was imagined and everything that was known.
• Clary’s dark brown eyes seemed to grow deeper and sadder. “There is so much darkness in Ember, Lina. It’s not just outside, it’s inside us, too. Everyone has some darkness inside. It’s like a hungry creature. It wants and wants and wants with a terrible power. And the more you give it, the bigger and hungrier it gets.”
• 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? He must be thinking the same way as Looper: everything was hopeless anyhow, so he’d live it up while he could.
• When Doon’s father asked why he was so late, he said his song rehearsal had gone long. He wanted to shout out to his father, We’ve found the way out! We’re saved! But he held himself in for the sake of his moment of glory. Tomorrow, when his father saw him on the steps of the Gathering Hall, he would be so overcome with surprise and pride that he would go weak in the knees, and the people standing next to him would have to catch him and hold him up.
• Spreading vicious rumors! Doon was so stunned that he stood still as stone for a long minute. What could they possibly mean? But there was only one answer. It had to be what they’d told the assistant guard about the mayor. Why were they calling it a vicious rumor? It was the truth! He didn’t understand it.