Cell One

“Boys who had grown up watching ‘Sesame Street,’ reading Enid Blyton, eating cornflakes for breakfast and attending the university staff primary school in polished brown sandals were now cutting through the mosquito netting of their neighbors’ windows, sliding out glass louvres, and climbing in to steal TVs and VCRs.”

References to Sesame Street and Enid Blyton in the boys’ childhoods, juxtaposed with the deviance of their teenage years, both illustrate the affluent social setting of the university and underscore the ironies at the root of its crime problems. Ultimately, the popularity of robbery and cult violence among the children of the educated elite is presented as an insensitive performance of poverty.

“I don’t know whether Nnamabia felt remorse for stealing her jewelry. I could not always tell from my brother’s gracious, smiling face what he really felt.”

This observation marks one of the first key instances of disconnect between the narrator and her older brother. Throughout “Cell One,” the narrator scrutinizes the facial expressions of others, particularly Nnamabia, to discern their thoughts and feelings. Her methods of scrutiny are often unsuccessful, speaking both to the disingenuous demeanor of many characters and the narrator’s unreliability.

“It was as if by pretending that Nnamabia had not done the things he had done we could give him the opportunity to start afresh.”

Here, the narrator’s frustrations with her parents’ permissive policies toward Nnamabia are stated outright in the aftermath of his robbery. The subjunctive mood of the sentence indicates that the conditions presented may not in fact be true, undermining her parents’ passive behavior.

“They sped across campus in their rickety blue Peugeot 505 and glowered at the students, their rusty guns poking out of the car windows. Nnamabia came home from his lectures laughing. He thought the police would have to do better than that; everyone knew the cult boys had newer guns.”

By paraphrasing Nnamabia’s response to the police presence on campus, the narrator makes clear his (and by extension, the other cult boys’) hubris regarding the police. On a superficial level, the officers’ car and guns are old and unimpressive, but the boys will soon learn that appearances can be deceiving and that the police have a dangerous amount of power over them.

“I was not entirely sure, either, that my brother had whatever it took—guts or diffidence—to join a cult.”

This statement is at once an endorsement of Nnamabia’s innocence and a withering insult against his character. The irony behind the narrator’s belief in her brother’s innocence—namely that she does not think he could possibly take the initiative to join a cult—speaks to her cynicism toward him but also the ways in which she has bought into notions of cult bravery herself. This speaks to The Dangers of the Bandwagon Effect.

“Nsukka, which was made up of our slow, insular campus and the slower, more insular town, was manageable; my father knew the police superintendent. But Enugu was anonymous. There the police could do what they were famous for doing when under pressure to produce results: kill people.”

Adichie elucidates the sociopolitical differences between Nsukka and Enugu, and this passage thus serves as a key moment of exposition within the story. The narrator contrasts the power dynamics of the two settings, clarifying that the police have far greater power in the bustling city and that this power corresponds to a murderous police culture.

“‘If we ran Nigeria like this cell,’ he said, ‘we would have no problems.’”

Nnamabia’s bold claim in support of the prison during the family’s first visit is one of “Cell One’s” most striking instances of ironic dialogue. Adichie suggests clearly in this moment that Nnamabia is naïve to both the cruelty of the police system and the cruelty of the cult system, which resemble each other in his formulation.

“I couldn’t see it. Nnamabia had seemed fine to me, slipping money into his anus and all.”

The narrator adopts a sardonic tone in this retort to her father’s assertion that being in prison has “shaken” Nnamabia. This tone humorously subverts Nnamabia’s prior nonchalance in revealing that he kept bribery money in his anus, emphasizing the grotesque absurdity of the entire situation.

“Instead, my parents remained silent. It was as if by refusing to criticize the police, they would somehow make Nnamabia’s freedom more likely.”

The syntax and structure of this quote directly mirrors that of Quote 4 and builds upon the ideas of misinformed behavior and passivity in that original passage. The parents’ consistent silence in the face of unethical behavior (both Nnamabia’s and the police’s) characterizes them as ineffectual and even cowardly.

“‘Of course it is wrong,’ my mother said. ‘But this is what the police do all the time. If they do not find the person they are looking for, they lock up his relative.’”

As another key example of The Normalization of Violence Under Oppressive Systems, this dismissive statement in response to Nnamabia’s concerns for the old man illustrate his mother’s complacency with police corruption and violence. Here, she juxtaposes morality and practicality, ultimately equivocating on the former.

“At first I thought it was Nnamabia, and then I thought it was the old man from his cell. It was neither. I knew the boy on the ground, who was writhing and shouting with each lash…I tried not to look at him as we walked inside.”

The narrator’s ability to see her brother and the old man—both sympathetic characters—in the body of the boy being beaten by police is a distinct moment of empathy in the text. Her ultimate decision to pointedly ignore the brutality occurring in front of her perpetuates The Harms of Privilege-Fueled Apathy.

“You cannot raise your children properly—all of you people who feel important because you work at the university—and when your children misbehave you think they should not be punished. You are lucky they released him.”

Class tensions are evident in this biting statement from the police officer, who is clearly resentful of the educated elite and uses this resentment as a justification to use violence against Nnamabia. These harsh sentiments echo the narrator’s critiques of her parents, raising questions about parental accountability.

“The only time my mother opened her mouth on the drive home was to ask Nnamabia if he wanted us to stop and buy some okpa. Nnamabia said no.”

Following his release from prison, this moment marks a shift in Nnamabia’s typically indulgent character. By refusing the opportunity to buy okpa, an Igbo delicacy, Nnamabia also rejects his parents’ attempts to pamper him for the first time in the story.