Totalitarianism, Complacency, and Resistance Theme Analysis

Ella Minnow Pea takes place on Nollop, a fictional island off the coast of South Carolina. The island is named after Nevin Nollop, the creator of the famous pangram (a sentence containing every letter of the alphabet), “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” A statue in the island’s main square commemorates Nollop’s achievement, with each letter of the pangram inscribed upon a tile at the statue’s base. When tiles of certain letters begin fall off of the statue, the governing body of the island (called the High Island Council) interprets this event as a sign from the late Nollop and they declare that each fallen letter will be outlawed in writing and in speech. With each successive tile, the Council’s statutes become more oppressive, and the punishments more severe. The story thus becomes an allegory for the gradual rise of totalitarian regimes. At first, it is easy for the citizens of Nollop to adapt to these laws and they don’t protest very much. But as more and more tiles fall off the statue, communication becomes nearly impossible. Thus, Dunn argues that complacency in the face of unfair laws allows for the rise of totalitarian regimes like that of the Council—and that accepting such regimes enables a gradual erosion of freedoms that later becomes much more difficult to resist.

Ella Minnow Pea, the story’s protagonist and a resident of the island’s main city of Nollopton, writes to her cousin Tassie (who lives in the more rural town of Nollopville) about the government’s actions. However, in Ella’s many letters, she also hints at the way she and others enable the government through complacency. When the first tile, “Z,” falls, the Council concludes that there may be some kind of divine intent behind its falling. This surprises Ella—she and other citizens thought that the glue holding the tiles might just have given out. She writes, however, that she and others “have kept [their] public speculation to a minimum for fear of government reprisal, so charged with distrust and suspicion have the esteemed island elders (and elderess) become following last year’s unfortunate visit by that predatory armada of land speculators from the States.” Ella believes that accepting what the Council says is the right thing to do in order to avoid punishment, but this complacency imbues the Council with even more power—which ultimately leads to harsher punishment. This punishment is swift: after “Z” falls, the Council proclaims that anyone who speaks or writes a word containing the letter “Z” will incur punishment for each offense. For the first offense, one will receive a “public oral reprimand.” The second will result in a choice of “body flogging” or being subjected to a headstock. The third will result in banishment from the island—or, if one refuses to leave, death. Ella is shocked by these edicts, but she allows for the possibility that it may actually be Nollop’s will that they find creative ways to avoid the letter “Z,” and writes that she will give the edicts “the benefit of cautious initial fealty.” This fealty, which the town gives as a whole, enables the Council to continue enacting ever-increasing punishments as more letters fall. This illustrates again the danger of complacency: even though a single letter is easy to avoid, it becomes much more difficult when only 18, 13, or 5 letters remain and the laws have been sanctioned by the citizens.

The citizens’ attempts at resistance are also quickly fettered out or disregarded as isolated incidents, emphasizing how when the majority of a society is complacent, it is difficult for resistance to take hold. By the time that most of the island has been banished, it is too late for any large-scale protest to take place, and people are too afraid to even try. Because the citizens view the Council’s first edict as a creative challenge, many try to follow it—though some quickly receive their first violations. One young man, William Creevy (described as “riotous” and “rule-flouting”), explicitly refuses to follow it and he quickly gains two offenses. Ella admits that while she shares William’s “contempt for the island authorities, [she does] not at present own his dangerous desire for insurrection.” Thus, the fear of punishment prevents them from acting up, which only enables more people to fall victim to the same fate. There are other attempts at protest: Mr. Kleeman, the editor of a local paper, prints an article that contains 5,000 uses of the letter “Z.” Ella, however, notes that this is a “cowardly exit,” because the newspaper is shut down afterward, leaving a huge communication gap among the townspeople. Thus, not only is resistance necessary, but it is necessary in a way that aids the people who remain in the town—a symbolic gesture like Mr. Kleeman’s only hurts them in the long run. The same is true of an entire family who, after “Q” is banned, marches into an open session of the Council wearing cartoon duck masks and making quacking sounds, whereupon they are immediately whipped. Again, while this is well-intentioned, small-scale resistance is nearly as ineffectual as complacency.

As the Council’s tyranny continues, Ella describes the horrors of watching friends and neighbors receive punishments: Ella’s cousin Tassie is imprisoned; Ella’s father, Amos, and mother, Gwenette, are exiled; and a friend named Mannheim is shot and killed. The majority of the citizens are exiled from Nollop as a result of their complacency in the book’s first chapters, yet Ella remains on the island to resist the Council. When only half of the letters survive, she writes, “I will learn to tawg in noomerals. I will learn sign langwage—anee-ting to stae in Nollop.” Ella will take drastic measures to communicate and thus restore the island to what it used to be. But the fact that Ella is alone—most other Nollopians have been exiled and society has all but collapsed—shows the dire consequences of the initial complacency that she and others displayed, and the need for widespread resistance to overthrow totalitarianism.