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Teaching The City of Ember

Shmoop's here to help you through your bleakest dystopia.

  • Activities: 13
  • Quiz Questions: 100

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Nobody in the city of Ember (eh? eh?) has ever known anything other than life in their city, ringed by absolute darkness outside its borders. Nobody knows how the generator works to keep the lights on—or why it's failing. Nobody knows why the cans of food are running out. In fact, a functioning Ember is all they have ever known. And as the electricity begins to fail, and the food stores dwindle, protagonists Lina and Doon must try to put the puzzle pieces together and figure out what's going wrong before it's too late to save their city.

And by the way, did we mention Ember's the last city on Earth?

In this guide, you'll find

  • creative, student-led research about blackouts.
  • exploration of dreams and hopes' roles in dystopian societies.
  • Cold War allegory like whoa. (Duck and cover!)

Jeanne DuPrau's written an extremely dark young adult classic; a page-turner your students will devour even when the events lead them in utter…darkness. Until, of course, you use activities in this very teaching guide.

What's Inside Shmoop's Literature Teaching Guides

Shmoop is a labor of love from folks who love to teach. Our teaching guides will help you supplement in-classroom learning with fun, engaging, and relatable learning materials that bring literature to life.

Inside each guide you'll find quizzes, activity ideas, discussion questions, and more—all written by experts and designed to save you time. Here are the deets on what you get with your teaching guide:

  • 13 – 18 Common Core-aligned activities to complete in class with your students, including detailed instructions for you and your students
  • Discussion and essay questions for all levels of students
  • Reading quizzes for every chapter, act, or part of the text
  • Resources to help make the book feel more relevant to your 21st-century students
  • A note from Shmoop's teachers to you, telling you what to expect from teaching the text and how you can overcome the hurdles

Want more help teaching Teaching The City of Ember?

Check out all the different parts of our corresponding learning guide.



Instructions for You

Objective: In the city of Ember, everyone's assigned a job. No one gets a choice. This lack of choice tends to take away people's hopes and dreams because when everything is decided for you, what's the point? Consider yourself lucky that you can proudly flash that awesome teaching certificate around. Lina and Doon don't have that enviable luxury.

Today students will explore the theme of dreams and hopes in The City of Ember, and how freedom of choice plays into all this.

This lesson will take about an hour or one class period.

Materials Needed: A visible list of jobs that might be found in a community like the city of Ember (one job per student), copies of The City of Ember for reference, and/or Shmoop's summary page

Step 1: Post a list of jobs on the white board or screen, or whatever. Make sure everyone gets a glimpse of the job list. Make sure there are enough jobs listed: one for every student. You can list more jobs than there are students, but don't list less.

Draw attention to the list and let your students stare at it for a few minutes.

Step 2: Ask the class: "If our class was a community like Ember, which of these jobs would you most want?" Have students write down their top three and a little blip about why they would want the job. For example:

  • Doctor: Because I care about the health of other people, and they make a lot of money.
  • Trash Collector: Because sometimes you can find treasures in the trash.
  • Guard: Because I'm tough and the ladies would swoon over my muscles.

You get the idea. When they're done, allow students to share.

Step 3: Now share the unfortunate news that in fact, they don't get a choice in their community job. Walk around the class with a hat (or bowl, or shoe, or prop skull) and have each student choose a paper at random. The paper will tell the student his or her job in the community.

If your brain is running low on community job ideas, here are a few to include:

  • Doctor
  • Teacher
  • Mayor
  • Electrician
  • Plumber
  • Cook
  • Teacher
  • Trash Collector
  • Gum Scraper
  • Mail Clerk
  • Artist
  • Dolphin Trainer (you never know…)

Step 4: By now, everyone's either smiling because they're cool with their assigned job, or they're whining because "Gum Scraper" isn't quite where they see themselves one day.

Have each student write their job on a piece of paper. Then, have them hold up their papers so that everyone can take a peek at who drew what.

Ask how everyone feels about their job. On a piece of paper, have students write out one- or two-sentence answers to each of the following questions:

  • How do you feel about the job you drew?
  • What's it like to not have a choice in something so important?
  • If you like your job, why? (Does it help people? Is it prestigious? Does it come with benefits? Are you good at it? Do you like to do this anyway?)
  • If you don't like your job, why? (Is it looked down upon? Is it a lot of work with no reward?)

Allow students to share their answers with the rest of class.

Step 5: Time to tie this depressing exercise back to The City of Ember. Lina and Doon are both pretty sore about the jobs they're assigned. In order to maneuver a little bit of free will and hope into the equation, Lina and Doon switch jobs.

The theme of dreams, hopes, and plans are peppered throughout The City of Ember. Read our Shmoopy take on this significant theme to the class:

The City of Ember is built on hope—no matter how dismal it seems in Lina and Doon's time. Obviously it took a lot of planning to make the dream of Ember (a refuge for humans in a world careening toward disaster) a reality. The Builders were some pretty ambitious and hard-working folks to make it come together. And if you fast forward to the present, we see Lina and Doon with hopes and plans of their own. Not everything they hope for comes to pass, but hey, we're gonna say that hoping in general is better than not hoping at all. (Source)

Step 6: Have students work in pairs for this next part. Each pair will make a glorious Venn diagram to do some character comparisons. One of the circles should encompass Lina's dreams and hopes, and the other circle will be Doon's. The center overlapping section will be Lina and Doon's hopes and dreams that are the same. When they're done putting this together, you can have everyone share as a class.

Step 7: As a class, in pairs, or individually on a piece of paper, have students answer one question: Why did the Builders plan Ember? Was it out of hope? Desperation? Direct them to our Shmoopy theme page for some inspiration.

Instructions for Your Students

Having dreams, hopes, and plans is important. A lot of times they keep us moving forward. Nothin' quite like the hope of a better day.

What about living in a dark underground city where jobs and titles are assigned for you, though? What kind of hope can you find with a greedy leader, a malfunctioning life source, and every task dictated to you? We might argue that in these circumstances, hope is all you have.

Today you'll explore the theme of dreams and hopes in The City of Ember, and how freedom of choice plays into all this.

Step 1: Take a look at the job list in front of you. Which would you like to have? Which would you never want to touch?

Step 2: Write down your top three and a little blip about why you would want the job.

Then, write down your bottom three with reasons why.

Step 3: Sorry, suckers. No one gets to choose their jobs in this community. Your teacher will ask you to draw one job at random.

Step 4: Take a peek. What'd you get?

On a piece of paper, write out one- or two-sentence answers to each of the following questions.

  • How do you feel about the job you drew?
  • What's it like not to have a choice in something so important?
  • If you like your job, why? (Does it help people? Is it prestigious? Does it come with benefits? Are you good at it? Do you like to do this anyway?)
  • If you don't like your job, why? (Is it looked down upon? Is it a lot of work with no reward?)

Step 5: Let's bring it back. Lina and Doon are both pretty sore about the jobs they're assigned. In order to maneuver a little bit of free will and hope into the equation, they switch jobs. Ah…now everyone's happy, right?

The themes of dreams, hopes, and plans are peppered throughout The City of Ember to demonstrate that sometimes dreams and hope motivate positive changes. Check out our Shmoopy take on this significant theme:

The City of Ember is built on hope—no matter how dismal it seems in Lina and Doon's time. Obviously it took a lot of planning to make the dream of Ember (a refuge for humans in a world careening toward disaster) a reality. The Builders were some pretty ambitious and hard-working folks to make it come together. And if you fast forward to the present, we see Lina and Doon with hopes and plans of their own. Not everything they hope for comes to pass, but hey, we're gonna say that hoping in general is better than not hoping at all. (Source)

Step 6: Pair up and prepare to create a Venn diagram.

One of the circles should encompass Lina's dreams and hopes, and the other circle will be Doon's. The center overlapping section will be Lina and Doon's hopes and dreams that are the same. When everyone's done, you'll share your diagram with the class.

Step 7: As a class, in pairs, or individually on a piece of paper, answer this: Why did the Builders plan Ember? Was it out of hope? Desperation? You can look at our Shmoopy theme page for some inspiration.