The City of Ember
Jeanne DuPrau (2003)
“Two hundred years underground, the lights are dying, and two twelve-year-olds hold the only instructions for escape — if they can piece them together before the city goes dark forever.”
Character Analysis
Lina is defined by movement and imagination. She runs through Ember's streets as a messenger with a joy that borders on defiance — in a city of confinement, her instinct is always toward open space and speed. Her drawings of an imagined bright city are acts of unconscious prophecy: she is reaching toward a world she has never seen and cannot name. Lina's contribution to the escape is intuitive rather than analytical — she believes in something beyond Ember before she has evidence, and that belief sustains the quest when evidence is incomplete.
Direct, sensory, action-oriented. Short sentences full of verbs. Frequently describes what she sees and feels rather than what she thinks.