Plot Summary
The plot is conveyed through mail or notes sent between various characters, though with the banned letters missing, creating passages that become more and more phonetically or creatively spelled, and requiring more effort to interpret.
The novel is set on the fictitious island of Nollop, off the coast of South Carolina, which is home to Nevin Nollop, the supposed creator of the well-known pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". This sentence is preserved on a memorial statue to its creator on the island and is taken very seriously by the government of the island. Throughout the book, tiles containing the letters fall from the inscription beneath the statue, and as each one does, the island's government bans the contained letter's use from written or spoken communication. A penalty system is enforced for using the forbidden characters, with public censure for a first offense, lashing or stocks (violator's choice) upon a second offense and banishment from the island nation upon the third. By the end of the novel, most of the island's inhabitants have either been banished or have left of their own accord.
The island's high council becomes more and more nonsensical as time progresses and the alphabet diminishes, promoting Nollop to divine status. Uncompromising in their enforcement of Nollop's "divine will", they offer only one hope to the frustrated islanders: to disprove Nollop's omniscience by finding a pangram of 32 letters (in contrast to Nollop's 35, or just 33 in the version "A quick brown..."). With this goal in mind "Enterprise 32" is started, a project involving many of the novel's main characters. With but five characters left (L, M, N, O, and P), the elusive phrase is eventually discovered by Ella in one of her father's earlier letters with him knowing all along that this would happen: "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs", which has only 32 letters. The council accepts this and restores the right to all 26 letters to the populace.
Read more about this topic: Ella Minnow Pea
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