“Ellaments” of Satire: an analysis of Ella Minnow Pea
“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship,” Bruce Colville once stated about censorship. In the novel Ella Minnow Pea written by Mark Dunn uses letters, notes, and mail by citizens throughout the small island of Nollop, a tiny strip of land off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop is named after one Nevin Nollop, creator of the famous pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” (5 Dunn). This sentence is the claim to fame that makes all Nollopians idolize Mr. Nollop and erect a statue of the sentence to pay homage to Nollop. Soon letters of the sentence begin to fall, and the Nollop worshipping high council begin to ban the usage of each letter as they fall. The high council use a system of penalties to enforce the banishment of …show more content…
Through the usage of superfluous censorship, totalitarian tactics, fear of punishment, and the moral dilemma of being a good citizen versus the cost of freedom Dunn uses satire to illustrate the possibilities of a big government gone wrong.
Ella Minnow Pea, and most Nollopians are morally good people who follow the rule of the land because it is the way they have been brought up. This group of linguistically sophisticated people are put to the absolute test when the alphabet that all Nollopians know and love is diminished to nothing more than a baby’s babble. The use of censorship is blatantly obvious because with each fall of a letter a decree is sent to all citizens stating the banishment and the reciprocating actions
“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship,” Bruce Colville once stated about censorship. In the novel Ella Minnow Pea written by Mark Dunn uses letters, notes, and mail by citizens throughout the small island of Nollop, a tiny strip of land off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop is named after one Nevin Nollop, creator of the famous pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” (5 Dunn). This sentence is the claim to fame that makes all Nollopians idolize Mr. Nollop and erect a statue of the sentence to pay homage to Nollop. Soon letters of the sentence begin to fall, and the Nollop worshipping high council begin to ban the usage of each letter as they fall. The high council use a system of penalties to enforce the banishment of …show more content…
Through the usage of superfluous censorship, totalitarian tactics, fear of punishment, and the moral dilemma of being a good citizen versus the cost of freedom Dunn uses satire to illustrate the possibilities of a big government gone wrong.
Ella Minnow Pea, and most Nollopians are morally good people who follow the rule of the land because it is the way they have been brought up. This group of linguistically sophisticated people are put to the absolute test when the alphabet that all Nollopians know and love is diminished to nothing more than a baby’s babble. The use of censorship is blatantly obvious because with each fall of a letter a decree is sent to all citizens stating the banishment and the reciprocating actions