Ella Minnow Pea Analysis

What kind of government is the High Council? After reading Ella Minnow Pea, one might be appalled at the amount of power the Nollop High Council has. The High Council, convinced the people that the letters were falling for a reason; as a result, the Council started to make laws banning usage of the fallen letters. In the real world, the High Council could be compared to some of the most infamous dictators; because both the High Council and dictators share the same methods of enforcing their rule, and both have complete power. The High Council in Ella Minnow Pea, is not only the enemy in the epistolary, but is also representative of the power mad enemy in our world, totalitarianism.

The High Council is representative of totalitarianism because

A totalitarian government is a government system, a single person or a governing group has absolute control. In the case of the High Council they were the governing group and they controlled every aspect of life on the island. A real life example of the High Council would be Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship in Italy; Mussolini started out as the prime minister of Italy but then seized full power and control of the government. In the beginning of Ella Minnow Pea, the author does not state the type of government the High Council was but throughout the book it is apparent that the High Council was a power hungry dictatorship. In the beginning the High Council made the laws regarding the falling of the letters; “Henceforth, use of the arguably superfluous twenty-sixth letter will be outlaws from all island speech and graph… And we, as his grateful servants have been called by High Council to obey”(Dunn 6). In 48 hours, the High Council had come up with this idea of

The fact that they even enforced them strictly, would make people wonder what kind of people would do that. But in fact, throughout history this absurd thinking has been repeated over and over again. Dictators making false claims and enforcing their rule on their helpless subjects. The author of Ella Minnow Pea is making a point in the epistolary that powerful governments are bad because there is rarely anyone to challenge their authority. Luckily, in the book, Ella saves Nollopton from becoming