The glue that holds the tiles to Nevin Nollop’s commemorative statue represents the tendency for blind faith to obscure logic and reason. When the tiles begin to fall off of the statue of Nollop, Nate uses analyses from American chemists to show that the tiles are falling solely because the glue is failing. However, the High Island Council ignores this scientific evidence, arguing that Nollop is somehow causing the glue to fail as a sign from beyond the grave. This allows the Council to subsume scientific fact into their own faith-based arguments that Nollop is a supreme deity. In this way, the dissolved glue represents how religion can allow individuals and entities to deny the truth—even proven scientific phenomena. Additionally, the glue’s dissolution parallels how society itself is slowly dissolving, relying less on facts with each new tile that falls and instead increasingly falling under the influence of the Council and their deification of Nollop.
Glue Quotes in Ella Minnow Pea
In so doing Most Senior Council Member Willingham and his four fellow counciliteurs left themselves scant room for the possibility that the tile fell simply because, after one hundred years, whatever fixant had been holding it in place, could simply no longer perform its function. This explanation seemed quite the logical one to me, as well as to my fellow laundresses.
Nollop is not God. Nollop is silent. We must respect that silence and make our decisions and judgments based upon science and fact and simple old-fashioned common sense—a commodity absent for too long from those in governmental elevatia, where its employ would do us all much good.
You’ve given me the scientific reason for why the tiles are falling, Mr. Warren. But might not Nollop be working through the science? Have you ever thought of this? The science, in point of fact, actually serving his specific purposes. Therefore, that of which I must have positive proof—the single fact that I must know for certain is that the Great Nollop isn’t working at all!
Glue Symbol Timeline in Ella Minnow Pea
