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Chapters 18–20

Summary: Chapter 18: Where the River Goes

The boat plunges into total darkness as it leaves the Pipeworks. The river rages, and the boat rocks violently, but soon the current slows, and Doon is able to light candles. Eventually, the boat reaches a shallow bank at the river’s end, where Lina and Doon find a pathway and Poppy finds a timeworn journal. Lina desponds when she discovers she still has the note about Ember’s exit strategy written for Clary, but the children are hopeful that Doon’s last-minute-note might reach his father. They fill their water bottles with river water, pack candles, and approach the path.

Summary: Chapter 19: A World of Light 

At the path’s entrance, Doon, Lina, and Poppy see a sign, left by the Builders to welcome refugees from Ember. The sign also informs them that the final stage of their journey, a two-hour climb, now lies ahead. After hiking by candlelight for some time, the children notice that the air starts to smell fresher and they begin to make out a faint light ahead. At last, they reach the end of the passage and emerge into an immense wilderness filled with beautiful things they have never seen and don’t have names for: “a silver lamp in the sky” (the moon), “silvery hair” (moonlit grass), “plants . . . taller than they were” (trees), “rolling swells” (hills), and “tiny flecks of light” (shining stars). For the first time, they sit transfixed and watch the sun rise, giving light to a bright blue sky, before reading the journal they had found by the river.

Summary: Chapter 20: The Last Message

Lina and Doon read the journal, penned by one of Ember’s original residents during the first days of her journey into the then newly built city. The author was one of fifty men and fifty women, all at least sixty years old, plus one hundred babies. Each baby is matched with one adult, who in turn is matched with another adult with whom they will parent both babies. From the entries, they also learn that scientists and engineers created Ember to ensure people would not disappear from the earth, which was in great peril at the time. Unaware if anyone is left and concerned that no one in Ember will know what to do, the children search for a way back, knowing the boat can’t travel against the river’s currents. 

While they are resting, they see a four-legged creature with rust-colored fur and a soft tail. It grabs a round purple object off the ground with its teeth. They agree that it is the most wonderful thing they have ever seen, and that this world is where they belong. They find more of the objects like the one the creature took, and they are juicy and sweet.

Soon the children ascend a slope and find an indent in the ground. Inside, a tunnel leads them to an immense, dizzying drop with a cluster of lights at its bottom. Lina and Doon realize it is Ember, at last grasping that the entire city, and not just the Pipeworks, exists underground. Hoping to make contact, Lina and Doon update the note they had written for Clary, adding details about their current whereabouts. Lina wraps it in Doon’s shirt and weighs the bundle down with a rock, and the three hold hands as Lina hurls it down into the darkness. Far below, the bundle lands with a thump, directly in front of Mrs. Murdo in Harken Square.

Analysis: Chapters 18–20

On the surface, Poppy is a liability for Lina and Doon, but her positive contribution to the group dynamic becomes clear during the journey. While Lina and Doon are busy doing things, Poppy is often busy finding things. Doon’s father tells him to pay attention to things that others overlook, but no one needs to tell Poppy to do this. Just as she found the box with the instructions while Granny was busy tearing apart the closet, Poppy finds the journal while Doon and Lina are busy in search of the pathway. Poppy’s stillness allows her to be the eyes and ears of the trio, an essential role when Lina and Doon must constantly be on the move.

The journal highlights how heavily the success of the Builders’ plan depended on the self-reliance of young people. The first parents of Ember were people near the end of their natural lives. The infants that they cared for would likely be in their teens when they were left to fend for themselves and go on to populate the city. The elderly parents would, by design, not pass down any generational knowledge to the first generation leaving these young people to create their own methods for raising a family, working, and structuring a community. The set of rituals that are firmly in place by the time Lina and Doon receive their assignments suggests that they were mostly successful in doing so, as does the commonplace nature of the massive amount of responsibility that comes along with those assignments.

Lina, Doon, and Poppy’s interactions in their new environment foreshadow the discoveries that they will make together. Poppy is too young to understand the meaning of the words in the journal that she found, but when Doon and Lina learn of its mysteries in her presence it is a nod to the value of their mutual findings. All three of them are discovering the natural world together for the first time, and when the fox appears, its presence transfixes them all and suggests that together they will encounter many other wonderful things. The food that it leaves for them symbolizes the hope that their discoveries will be fruitful.

The fact that Lina and Doon find a solution to the problem of the undelivered message illustrates that they, much like the first infants who went on to populate Ember, have become a new family unit. They keep moving together instead of castigating themselves or assigning blame, and when one of them falters the other is always there to provide perspective and encouragement. The message tied to the rock is their last resort and their only hope, and the end of the story is a literal cliffhanger as Lina, Doon, and Poppy stand at the edge of a cliff together holding hands. They have already survived one arduous journey together and in this moment it is clear that no matter what happens, the trio will endure it and continue to persevere as a family.

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