Previous Next

Chapters 4–6

Summary: Chapter 4: Something Lost, Nothing Found

Lina finds Granny tearing up their couch while looking for something she had heard that her grandfather, Ember’s seventh mayor, lost long ago. Later, Lina’s work takes her to the greenhouses, which stand near trash heaps at the city’s southeast edge. Guards were recently posted at the trash heaps and crews have begun to comb through them for useful items. Lina is delighted to deliver a message to its manager and her friend, Clary, but sad because the greenhouses remind her of her father, who worked there before he died. 

Lina learns from Clary that a new disease has infected Ember’s potatoes, one of the city’s food staples. The two then hear loud sobs from Sadge Merrall, who is in great distress after attempting to venture into the Unknown Regions. While searching for something that might help the city, Sadge encounters only immense darkness that fills him with fear. Sadge tells Clary and Lina that the Unknown Regions will never be penetrated without a portable light source, something that doesn’t exist in Ember. Lina asks Clary if she thinks Ember is the only light in a dark world, and Clary says she doesn't know. Lina tells Clary about her imagined city of light. Lina stresses that the city feels real and that she believes there's a hidden doorway that leads out from Ember. Clary plants a bean in a pot and tells Lina to take it home and water it, because there is life inside it. As Clary and Lina discuss mysteries about Ember’s Builders, the Unknown Regions, and where they came from, Lina tells Clary about her imagined city of light. Lina stresses that the city feels real and that she believes there’s a hidden doorway that leads out from Ember.

Summary: Chapters 5: On Night Street

Granny’s aging mind grows more muddled, so Lina has Mrs. Murdo, their neighbor, keep her company. Lina visits a store on Night Street, run by Looper, that has colored pencils, a rare commodity in Ember. She sets Poppy down to look at the pencils he is selling, which are so expensive that Lina can barely afford one. She feels such a hunger for them that she buys two, a blue and a green, then realizes Poppy is gone. As Lina searches for Poppy in surrounding streets, a blackout, the longest in Ember’s history, consumes the city. When the lights return, Lina finally finds Poppy and learns that Doon kept her safe in his father’s shop during the blackout.

Summary: Chapters 6: The Box in the Closet

In response to the blackout, citizens attend a meeting in Harken Square. Mayor Cole attempts to calm the crowd, saying those in power are managing the problem. The mayor speaks through a megaphone that garbles his words, and some listeners repeat his words about difficult times and patience while others shout for him to speak up. But the townspeople sense he is lying. They grow angry and yell and surge at him as he escapes into the Gathering Hall. After the meeting, Doon rails about the mayor’s lies, but his father advises him to learn to master his anger. At home, Lina finds Granny ransacking a closet, from which she’s unknowingly dislodged a beautiful but damaged box with a mechanized lock and opened lid. Nearby, Poppy chews and rips up a piece of paper lined with perfect printing.

Analysis: Chapters 4–6

The fact that the trash heaps are now an important resource for useful items is concrete proof of how dire the situation has become in Ember. It is in the Mayor’s best interest to keep citizens unaware of any shortages. Placing guards in public view could easily confirm the suspicions of any citizen who strolled by this desolate part of town, but it is clearly a risk that he must take. The adjacent greenhouses stand in stark contrast to the trash heaps, but the new disease affecting its potatoes provides further evidence of the threat to Ember’s limited resources.

When Lina’s encounter with Sadge sparks her curiosity, it becomes clear that it is possible to grow to think independently in Ember despite its rigid social structure. Like Doon, Lina has a capacity for intelligence as well as imagination, and her question for Clary about Ember being the only light further illustrates this capacity. Like all children her age the bulk of her experience comes from her brief time at school, where the main objective is to prepare students for a life of work rather than fuel their imagination. Lina’s boundless imagination is notable for her upbringing, and Clary’s gift of the bean plant shows that she also possesses intellectual and emotional abilities far beyond those needed to simply carry out her assigned tasks. The bean plant itself, which survives among the diseased potato plants, symbolizes Lina’s potential for emotional growth within a closed-minded society. 

Lina’s trip to buy colored pencils suggests that she is still very much a child, despite her adult responsibilities. Her desire to possess the pencils is so strong that it completely overwhelms her ability to prioritize her family’s needs. The fact that she risks her family’s budget to buy two overpriced, nonessential items indicates that she is in a sort of frenzy where all she can think of are her own wants, like a spoiled child demanding more candy. This myopic focus on her own childish desires is also what leads her to put Poppy, her actual family member, in the path of danger. Her childishness also leads her to look to Captain Fleery for guidance regarding the box instead of trusting her own insights about her findings. At Lina’s age it is natural for her to put trust in authority figures, but her letter to the mayor about the box foreshadows that her childlike faith in adults is misguided. 

Ember’s vast network of human messengers suggests that its social structure is designed to keep its citizens from sharing knowledge with one another. Just as productivity is more important to Ember’s survival than individual growth, clear lines of communication between citizens do not benefit those at the top of the social structure. The mayor’s megaphone seems engineered to keep people from understanding him, and when his garbled platitudes cause the people to repeat his words to each other, they are not made any clearer upon translation. Doon understands that the mayor’s speech is full of empty words, and the incomprehensible words that Lina finds in the box highlight how difficult it is for the average person to make sense of things in Ember.

Previous section The Instructions & Chapters 1–3 Next section Chapters 7–10

Take a Study Break