Coming of Age Theme Analysis

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.