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What is the relevance of the title "City of Ember"?
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The title "City of Ember" reflects the city's role as a temporary refuge, akin to an ember that holds the last hope for reigniting a new future. Built underground to escape a devastated world, Ember was designed to last 200 years. As its electrical systems fail, the city symbolizes a dying light. The protagonists, Lina and Doon, represent the potential to rekindle this hope and transition to a new life above ground.
Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember is the story of a town beneath the ground where a complicated electrical grid provides the only light the inhabitants of the city know. At the time of the founding of Ember, the world is experiencing problems that cause the builders to fear that they must prepare for a future where the world above-ground may no longer be inhabitable. They create Ember and leave enough supplies and infrastructure to last for 200 years, after which they plan for the current mayor of the city to open a box and reveal directions to escape.
Ember represents the builder's last hope for a better future. It is the metaphorical ember at the end of a burning fire—the only hope to spark a new flame. As the years pass, and the electrical systems begin to fail, the town is plunged into occasional darkness, and Lina and Doon...
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become embers for the city—the last hope at finding a new source of light.
The city was never supposed to be a new world, only a temporary one. It was meant to literally stay an ember and then spark, through the instructions in the box, into a new world on the surface, once it was again safe to live there. The builders always intended for the city to simply be an ember, and thus it got its name.
An ember is "a glowing fragment (as of coal) from a fire" and is often the last little bit of heat and light when that fire is dying.
In The City of Ember, the world has suffered a catastrophic series of conflicts and almost all infrastructure to support civilization has been destroyed. The one remaining source of light is the electrical generator and distribution system in Ember, which is seriously outdated and failing due to its age and the diminishing supply of fuel. The parallels between the title of the book, the situation in the city, and the definition are obvious. As with an ember in a fire, Ember as a city is still alight but is struggling and its light is dying.