Ella Minnow Pea Character Analysis

Ella Minnow Pea is the kind of book rewarded for its impressive vocabulary and clever use of the English language. There is a reason for this. The book is written entirely through the exchange of letters between characters, so there is no dialogue or personal thoughts that the reader is given to understand the characters. Due to this, the character development shown throughout the book is seen by the word choice of the letters alone. Since Nollop is an island that treasures language to a high standard, it would make sense that the reader sees the characters through the eyes of written word. After reading Ella Minnow Pea, I was amazed at how Mark Dunn had been able to strategically pull off this type of writing, and was able to show character …show more content…
Nollop’s inhabitants greatly value the art of language, and teach from a young age high vocabulary and writing skills. This is because Nevin Nollop, who the island was named after, came up with a short sentence containing all the letters of the alphabet. The island honors Nevin Nollop by continuing to excel in the art of language and writing, with special focus on letter writing. The setting of this book is very important to the storyline. The fictional island, Nollop, is one that from the start is highly educated in the art of the written and spoken word, yet becomes a world filled with ghosts of the banished citizens and the struggling few who remain. It is truly ironic that an island once flourishing in vocabulary and speech is the very same island where it becomes illegal to speak most of the alphabet. This theme of education and how it has been dramatically limited with the loss of the letters is tragic on the island that used to be so knowledgeable. One of the few people who remains on the island toward the end is Ella Minnow Pea, the character whom the book is named after, and a prominent figure in this novel. She is the one that discovered the sentence containing all the letters of the alphabet and fitting the 32-letter requirement. She is the one that saved the island from further deterioration. However, it was not Ella that wrote the sentence, but her father on accident in a …show more content…
There is the majority of people, who don’t speak up when they feel they have been wronged, because they are afraid of what could happen. This is said well in the letter to Ella from her cousin Tassie, who writes, “The Council is wrong. Yet, observe that none of us will risk telling it so, for fear of the consequences” (10). Then there are people like Georgeanne Towgate, who will follow any ruling from authoritative figures, because they believe that this is the right thing to do. As Georgeanne stated in a letter to Tassie, “I sincerely believe, as do several who have joined me for biweekly talk group sessions, that Nollop...is now attempting to pry us away from our traditional heavipendence on linguistic orthodoxy” (42). She is clearly one who sides with authority and believes that they have proper reasoning for their actions. Later, however, Georgeanne goes insane due to these very rulings made by the