Ella Minnow Pea Analysis

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“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” In Mark Dunn’s novel Ella Minnow Pea, such an effect is depicted in a modern world where language is an ever-changing aspect of society. There have been many times in history when restrictions have been placed upon language and communication, and even recently Russia’s president Vladimir Putin signed a law forbidding cursing in arts and media. Back when the Nazis were in power, book burnings were a common sight. Such censorship and limitation placed upon the written word similarly appears on the island of Nollop, where letters are outlawed and eventually libraries disappear. The unifying factor in all these cases is that there is present, to a certain degree, a kind of tyrannical government imposing such constraints. Within the novel, Mark Dunn criticizes not the existence of these oppressive forces, but the way that people put such blind faith and belief in them, and the way that they justify this through false impressions of the divinity and omnipotence they perceive them to possess. Those in power, like the members of the island’s high council, are depicted as abusing those notions and taking advantage of that naivety in order to remain in power. Targeted towards a modern audience familiar with such examples of the abuse of power in respect…show more content…
Ella’s father unconsciously achieves victory for the champions of Enterprise 32 when he writes to her: “Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.” This phrase has not only contains all 26 letters of the alphabet but also has only 32 letters, 3 less than Nevin Nollop’s phrase. Not only does the phrase have less letters, but there was no genius characteristic associated with it as it was something that slipped out in the normal discourse of language. Therefore, this effectively illegitimated the treatment of Nollop as a divine being as he did not complete such an amazing act of wits at

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