The Quotes of Mystery

Author’s Note: This piece is about a very important quote in the novel The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau.

Just imagine living in a city where the only source of light in our domain happens to be awkwardly placed lamp posts and that your city is surrounded by an eerie darkness. Think about how your community isn’t coming together at difficult times but instead, they are fighting over things like light bulbs. If your city was about to collapse because of the people in it, would you find out a way to escape? In the book, The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, this is what Doon and Lina go through when they find the instructions that were written by the Builders, many years ago. After that moment, those two and Lina’s sister Poppy, find mysterious items that they have no idea what to do with.

When Doon and Lina find toolboxes with candles and matches in them, they exclaimed, “What does ‘Candles’ mean?” and “And what does ‘Matches’ mean? Matches what!” These quotes from Lina and Doon show the reader that the people of Ember were very isolated when they entered the mystical city. What is really mysterious, is that the first people that went into Ember, didn’t pass down those common words and concepts down from the outside world like matches and candles to their given children.

These quotes from the book The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau express how the characters and people in the city have no idea about the outside world. The existence of Ember is only known by those who built it and the people who live there. The majority of the people of Ember believe in one thing and one thing only, and that is The Book of the City of Ember.