Blind Faith, Reason, and Logic Theme Analysis

The Council that oversees the island of Nollop determines that the island’s namesake, Nevin Nollop, is somehow intervening from beyond the grave and causing tiles from his commemorative statue to fall. The Council interprets this supposed divine intervention to mean that Nollopian citizens should no longer use the letters on the tiles that fall. As others try to argue for more logical reasons as to why the tiles are falling—and therefore why the letters should not be banned from the island—the Council refuses to hear this logic and simply continues to deify Nollop. Ella and the other citizens of Nollop are fed up with the Council’s limitations on language, however, and they are ultimately able to make the Council see the error of their ways by disproving the basis of their faith: that only Nollop was supreme and almighty enough to create a 35-letter pangram (a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet). When Ella’s father, Amos, accidentally creates a pangram using only 32 letters, then, the Council acknowledges the baselessness of their faith and they rescind their edicts. Thus, Dunn suggests that in order to make a logical argument in the face of blind faith, one must dismantle the fundamentals of the belief system from the ground up rather than trying to refute its individual claims.

When the tiles begin to fall, the Council immediately assesses that this is the divine will of Nevin Nollop. However, Ella and the other citizens recognize that the Council is acting on blind faith rather than logic. Ella writes to her cousin Tassie about the first tile’s fall and about what the Council decides to do: “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.” Thus, Ella establishes that the Council is a body which opposes logic, as they instead view this rather unremarkable occurrence as a purposeful “manifestation of Mr. Nollop’s wishes” from beyond the grave. They have little evidence for this supposition, instead relying on faith for their assessment. The Council’s faith is further emphasized in a later chapter, after three tiles have fallen. They call Nollop the “Almighty” and they provide 10 pronouncements as an explanation for banning the use of the letters. These include: “His will be done,” “There is no room for alternative interpretation,” “Interpretation of events in any other way represents heresy,” and “Heretics will be punished.” This religious language emphasizes the faith-based nature of these edicts and the fact that the Council is simply viewing the events as Nevin Nollop’s will. Because of this, members of the Council are unreceptive to logic, as they emphasize that any other interpretations will be denied and punished. The irony of their actions is that during Nevil Nollop’s life, he taught the citizens of the island to revere language and extend its boundaries—now, despite claiming to worship Nollop, the Council limits and degrades the very language he loved. Thus, the Council establishes itself as an inherently illogical entity.

Ella and others, particularly a visiting American man named Nate Warren, at first try to fight the Council’s edicts with logic: they attempt to prove that the falling letters are not an act of divine will, but instead that the glue holding them on the statue simply gave out. Still, the Council refuses to hear this logic, and the situation becomes an allegory for religious fanaticism and a refusal to listen to scientific fact. Nate has chemists analyze the tiles and the glue, and these scientists find that the glue had “calcified to the point of ineffectual granule and powder.” Nate takes the report to the Council in hopes of reasoning with them that there is a scientific basis for what’s happening. Tassie writes to Ella that their findings “prove beyond doubt and wanton denial that the tiles are falling for the simple reason that they can no longer hold themselves to the bandiford. It is as elementary as that. Nollop is not God.” Ella, too, argues that logic should be placed above the Council’s faith. The Council, however, circumvents this logic. When Nate presents the findings, one of the Council members, Rederick Lyttle, says, “You’ve given me the scientific reason for why the tiles are falling, Mr. Warren. But might not Nollop be working through the science? Have you ever thought of this? The science, in point of fact, actually serving his specific purposes.” Rederick asserts that the science is helping Nollop, rather than the science being entirely outside Nollop’s control. They argue that Nate’s scientific explanation actually proves their own theory, again ignoring logic and superimposing faith onto fact. Thus, the Council’s faith can be used to make any argument—and even to explain away facts that disprove their beliefs.

Since the Council refuses to acknowledge logical explanations about what’s making the tiles fall, the only way of refuting them is to disprove the root of their faith rather than their individual claims. The Council tells its citizens that Nollop’s famous 35-letter pangram (“the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”) makes him “Omnipotent. Omniscient. Omniglorious” and that coming up with a shorter pangram “simply cannot be done,” which is what justifies them in limiting the letters the citizens are free to use. They state that if any citizen can come up with a pangram of 32 letters (five fewer than Nollop’s) in six weeks’ time, the bans will be lifted. Their faith provides them with their own sense of reasoning: that Nollop is worthy of worship because his accomplishments are not attainable by anyone else. Ella and the other citizens thus immediately get to work on what they dub “Enterprise Thirty-two” to try and find a 32-letter pangram and thus disprove the Council. In a farewell letter to Ella, Amos unknowingly pens such a sentence: “pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.” With this shorter pangram, they demonstrate that anyone can achieve what he achieved, and only then does the Council agree that their faith in Nollop is baseless. Ella only recognizes the sentence as a pangram in the final hours before the Council’s deadline. In her letter to the Council, she acknowledges that the accidental nature of the sentence’s creation proves that “it is not a miracle.” Ella and the other citizens thus demonstrate that while the Council thought their stance was impervious to logic, they were ultimately thwarted by their own terms and the baselessness of their faith. As such, the novel makes the case that in order to disprove a person or entity operating on blind faith, one must fundamentally deconstruct the belief system in question.