Ella Minnow Pea Characters

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn is a novel in which Dunn entertains his reader while trying to bring out bigger points. His message is evidently shown throughout the whole book. The points that Dunn wants to address in his book are that we as individuals are lacking critical thinking, language and communication and that consequences can come with it. Mark Dunn uses the epistolary genre, which is a style of writing comprised of letters, and by doing so he makes reading the book more personal, for the reader is reading letters in which the characters talk in first person, revealing more than any other genre would. All the while Dunn uses his ability to play with letters to show the reader about how language can be fun, manipulated and extremely

Slip of the pen. All over town people hesitate,stammer, fumble of ways to express themselves, grip grasping about for linguistics conconctives to the serve the simplest of purposes” (Dunn 77). Simple tasks can become tedious like those in the Nollop Island. We can’t just go past it not only does it help us communicate it 's how we can express ourselves such as in letters. Many of the characters due to the limiting use of letters they had developed a daily struggle as Mittie wrote to Gwenette, “The wine. Plus the loss of the grammatical unifier. It is all too much” ( Dunn 76). Dunn not only tries to convey the reader of the importance of language, but how fun it can be as well. By writing in the book in letters one can read and see how the characters in the book struggle to write and how this affects them greatly for the frustration they have is expressed in their letters. The letters through the book show lack of their use of proper language and how it affected them

Going back to the previous point the next message in the book is the importance of communication, or to be more precise, the lack of communication. In this book, the letters start as lengthy and full of life, and as the book goes on and the communication decreases the letters are shorter and people become unhappy. Dunn’s use of letters as a form of writing shows effectively what the lack of communication does to people. When one shortens their communication with people, it can lead to loneliness and avoidance of actual human interaction. In the book, when the tiles were falling and letters were being discarded, it caused a communication gap. As Ella wrote, “You were right about the fallout from this absurd law. Not only does it cripple communication between islanders, it builds rock walls between hearts” (Dunn 22). In the book, not only did the letters get shorter, the lack of communication prohibited by their absurd laws made the people unpleasant. They were lonely and made many people rather leave than live like