The government in Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember can best be described as a dictatorship . Though the city is run by a mayor, the mayor does not seem to be an elected official since elections are never mentioned. Instead, the mayor seems to be appointed in some other...
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way. Plus, themayor remains in office until he or she is
too old to do the job; then, the post is passed down to someone else,
as we see when the narrator notes in the prologue that Ember's first mayor
successfully guarded the box containing the secret instructions out of Ember,
and "when she grew old, and her time as mayor was up, she explained about the
box to her successor, who also kept the secret carefully, as did the next
mayor." The following are other signs that the city's
government is a dictatorship: (1) the only books found in the
city teach about and promote the city and are written by the citizens; (2) kids
are assigned jobs at the age of 12 without being given any choices; and (4) the
people of Ember are taught to praise the city as the only great place in
existence.
We begin to learn about the only books that exist in the city
when, in the opening chapter, on Assignment Day, Lina looks around the
classroom and fondly sees what books she has learned from: The Book of
Numbers, The Book of Letters, and The Book of the City of
Ember. Later, in chapter 8, we learn that the city's library contains
packets of papers written by citizens. The library is also poorly organized, as
if reading and information are not what Ember's citizens generally believe to
be important.
In the opening chapter, we learn that when all school children reach the age of
12, their education stops, and they are assigned different
jobs to do around the city. Though they may wish for specific jobs,
jobs are assigned by luck of the draw, and people like Lina and Doon, who hope
for specific jobs, must be disappointed.
Later, we are told some of the informationThe Book of the
City of Ember contains such as the following statement:
It is the only light in the dark world. Beyond Ember, the darkness goes on forever in all directions. (Ch. 2)
While Lina is in the reception room of the mayor's office, waiting to deliver the mayor a message, we learn while she flips through The Book of the City of Ember that citizens are taught to believe the city has been stocked with enough provisions for all to last until the end of time. All of these teachings about the city serve as propaganda to make the citizens think highly of the city; dictatorships, such as the past Soviet Union and the current Republic of China, use propaganda in the exact same way.