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A sentence that uses all 26 letters of the English language. In Ella Minnow Pea, Nevin Nollop is credited with thinking up the 35-letter pangram “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” a feat that leads to an island, Nollop, being named after him. The island’s governing body, the High Island Council, believes that Nevin Nollop’s ability to make this pangram means he’s a deity, and so the citizens of Nollop are challenged with having to create a 32-letter pangram if they want to disprove the Council’s religious beliefs.
Pangram Quotes in Ella Minnow Pea
The Ella Minnow Pea quotes below are all either spoken by Pangram or refer to Pangram. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
In so doing Most Senior Council Member Willingham and his four fellow counciliteurs left themselves scant room for the possibility that the tile fell simply because, after one hundred years, whatever fixant had been holding it in place, could simply no longer perform its function. This explanation seemed quite the logical one to me, as well as to my fellow laundresses.
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Chapter 3
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7. The falling tiles can represent only one thing: a challenge—a summons to bettering our lot in the face of such deleterious complacency, and in the concomitant presence of false contentment and rank self-indulgence.
8. There is no room for alternative interpretation.
9. Interpretation of events in any other way represents heresy.
10. Heretics will be punished, as was, for example, Mr. Nollop’s saucy stenographer, who was cashiered for flippantly announcing to her employer the ease with which she could, herself, create such a sentence as his.
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Chapter 6
Quotes
The prospect of actually being able to control the outcome of this ghastly assault on our collective spirit, let alone our very humanity, by turning this offensive upon its cephalus, has sent some among our subterra movement to heights of unencompassable ecstasy.
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Chapter 14
Quotes
Alto I no tat Nollop isn’t trewlee going awae. Tee reason: I am not going awae. I will learn to tawg in noomerals. I will learn sign langwage—anee-ting to stae in Nollop.
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Insitentallee, ewe are propaplee reating mie last letter to ewe. It is now simplee too tiring to write. To sae watt I most sae in langwage one mae onterstant.
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Chapter 17
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All the Council members save Lyttle have tendered their resignations. Immediately thereafter Harton Mangrove attempted suicide with his necktie. It was a clumsy attempt and quickly foiled. Following our excursion to the vault, Lyttle, Tom and I proceeded to the cenotaph, climbed to the top, and with sledgehammers in hand, initiated, in earnest, an act of destructive revisionism.
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Get the entire Ella Minnow Pea LitChart as a printable PDF.
Pangram Term Timeline in Ella Minnow Pea
The timeline below shows where the term Pangram appears in Ella Minnow Pea. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...Nollop, the man for whom the island is named, and who is credited with the pangram “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Each letter of the pangram is...
(full context)
Chapter 3
...like Nollop’s stenographer, who was dismissed because she believed that she could create a better pangram than Nollop’s.
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...letters or less. The Council argues that she was not able to create such a pangram because “it simply cannot be done,” and that “this is what has given Nollop his...
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Chapter 5
...your Baal.” Nate says that the only reason Nollop is worshipped is because of the pangram, and that given a few weeks, they could come up with a shorter sentence than...
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...then got an idea: he posited that if someone could come up with a shorter pangram than Nollop’s famous one, then Nollop would no longer be worthy of worship. Lyttle agreed...
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Chapter 6
...that the citizens are very excited by the challenge of coming up with a shorter pangram than Nollop’s. She says that the possibility of being able to thwart the Council’s oppression...
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...Tassie closes her letter quickly due to the fact that she must help with the pangram challenge.
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...later, Nate writes a love letter to Tassie as he watches her working on the pangram challenge. Rory also writes to Mittie, saying that he appreciates how she is taking care...
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Chapter 7
...a wall at 47 letters. Many people in town have given up, believing a 32-letter pangram to be impossible. Many people are also gone from the island—either because of banishment or...
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...church for worshipping Nollop. Mittie assures Ella that they will be able to make a pangram of 32 letters, as she reminds Ella that Nollop could do it and he was...
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Chapter 8
...writes again to Nate, telling him that Professor Mannheim has come up with a 44-letter pangram: “six big devils from Japan quickly forgot how to walk.” She also tells him that...
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Chapter 10
...tea the next day, and she exalts in the fact that they found a 43-letter pangram (“My girl wove six dozen plaid jackets before she quit”).
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Chapter 11
...met thee,” she writes. Tom responds, explaining excitedly that they have made progress: a 37-letter pangram. It reads, “Zelda quickly wove eight nubby flax jumpers.”
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Chapter 12
...is asking for the impossible and that their only course is to find a 32-letter pangram.
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Chapter 16
...sentence repeatedly, each time highlighting a different letter of the alphabet: it is a 32-letter pangram.
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Chapter 17
Ella writes to Rederick Lyttle using the entire alphabet, wherein she provides the 32-letter pangram, “Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs?” She says that the credit is due...
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...and Tassie, explaining what has happened. She tells them that the Council members declared the pangram a miracle. Ella explains that it was not a miracle, though, and that Nollop’s first...
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...a computer scientist in America, asking if he could come up with the shortest possible pangram they can create in English, with minimal proper names. The man writes back with four...
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