We live in a time when freedom of expression is being taken away or silenced, such as book bans worldwide. In Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn writes about the danger of stripping away the expression “For we cannot even write of its history. Because to write of it, is to write it” (Dunn 14). The novel Ella Minnow Pea follows a young girl on the island of Nollop, named after the man who wrote the Pangram “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog”. This sentence is a crucial part of the island's history, in the middle of town they have a cenotaph with this phrase. They view the inventor of this phrase as a founding father. When the statue deteriorates, the letters start falling. As a result, the Council decides that when a…show more content… Women had been fighting for the right to vote for years, but they weren’t seen as the head of the house; they had to do everything through men. They only got what they wanted after years of protesting and protesting. Back then we regarded women’s suffrage as too great a change from the Constitution’s original intent, today people couldn’t imagine women not having the right to vote. Even though some laws are based on religious ideals, they still ostracize citizens and foreigners. Religion can be used to deny people their freedoms because America should not mix religion and law. In a place like Nollop people may share a similar faith, but when using old scriptures to determine laws the council cannot grow with the time and changing events like the letters falling. When conditions change, so should the culture. In conclusion, Nollop is an insightful allegory for a totalitarian government and a council that does not want to change its ways. There are many parallels to America in the past 20 years, like Roe v Wade getting overturned, countless books getting banned and the heavy laws being put on transgender people. Regardless of how the American government looks now, there is hope, much like Nollop, we can find novel
