Ella Minnow Pea

Product Information

Ella Minnow Pea dwells heavily on the theme of communication–reading, writing, and talking. What is Dunn suggesting by having the members of the High Island Council read the falling letters as signs–supernatural communications from Nollop–which ultimately make communication nearly impossible? What does the novel as whole say about the nature and purpose of communication and community?

Ella Minnow Pea Character Analysis - LitCharts Ella Minnow Pea Character Analysis - LitCharts

Apocalypse How, Class 0: Regional societal collapse, brought on by the deportation of nearly everyone. Even after Enterprise 32 succeeds, it's unclear whether Nollop will have a working society again. What does Ella Minnow Pea suggest about dictatorships: their origins, aims and methods of accumulating and holding on to power? Is it fair to treat a book as fanciful as this one as a document of totalitarianism? A hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhereMark Dunn is the author of more than twenty-five full-length plays, including the widely produced Belles and Five Tellers Dancing in the Rain. He has received several national playwriting awards and is currently playwright-in-residence with the New Jersey Repertory Company and the Community Theatre League in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Ella Minnow Pea is his first novel. Suggested Reading In response to the first proclamation proscribing the use of the letter “Z,” Tassie warns, “it stands to rob us of the freedom to communicate without any manner of fetter or harness” [p. 10]. In what sense can Ella Minnow Pea be read as a satire of censorship and the restriction of free speech? Ella Minnow Pea is a lipogrammatic novel; that is, it is written to avoid using certain letters of the alphabet—ultimately, all of them save ‘l, m, n, o, p.’ As such, it is a late example of the school of literature known as ‘OuLiPo,’ an acronym for ‘Ouvroir de Littératture Potentielle’ or ‘Workshop for Potential Literature.’ Although OuLiPo originated in France, where it was co-founded in 1960 by the writer and mathematician Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, it has come to include works by Italian (Italo Calvino), Argentinean (Julio Cortázar), and U.S. (Harry Mathews, Walter Abish) writers. Oulipian novels are composed under certain constraints of language, plot or structure. According to Professor Paul Harris of Los Angeles’ Loyola Marymount University, such “constraints push writers into new linguistic territories—one might say that an Oulipian work is a sort of ongoing investigation into language itself.” Harris’s essay “The OuLiPo,” can be viewed at:

Ella Minnow Pea Teacher’s Guide - Penguin Random House Ella Minnow Pea Teacher’s Guide - Penguin Random House

Bathos: Despite the downward spiral that Nollop's social structure is on, it's quite amusing to see the substitutes people invent for months and days of the week once their proper forms are illegalized, such as "Riggy-roo, Octopus 20" note Friday, October 20.

How it happen is not easy to tell: he yoose an illegal letter in interphew aphter poleese see him ant Tom going threw wintow into yew-niphersity hall— trespassing. He yoose the letter, then when the poleese go to tie his hants to transport him to Pier 7, he ant Tom try to phlee so teportation will not happen.