Cell One

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2007

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Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

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Literary Devices

First-Person Perspective

Literature written in the first-person perspective is told by a character involved in the action of the narrative from their own point of view (using the pronouns I/me). In “Cell One,” Adichie writes the story from the first-person perspective of a character who is not the protagonist himself but rather his younger sister. This technique capitalizes on the inherently limited nature of the first-person perspective to maintain some degree of mystery surrounding Nnamabia and the events of the story, contributing to the unsettling ambiguity of what happens in the prison. Since the narrator is not always with Nnamabia, there are gaps in her access to essential information. Prime among these unknowns are the questions surrounding Nnamabia’s guilt and the horrific occurrences within cell one, which the narrator never fully ascertains.

Nnamabia’s inscrutability to the narrator is established early in the story, when she observes, “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” (Paragraph 9). Here, the narrator’s limited perspective reinforces a disconnect between the two characters and reinforces the notion that the narrator’s understanding of events may not be as complete as she sometimes thinks.

Irony

Irony refers to a set of circumstances that run contrary to expectations, often to a darkly humorous effect. In literary settings, irony often manifests when characters are unaware of the significance that underlies their own words or actions (this is a subcategory called dramatic irony). Adichie effectively layers a series of dramatic ironies throughout “Cell One” as a pointed form of sociopolitical critique which is made evident to the readers but imperceptible to the characters themselves. One of the most striking instances of irony occurs when the narrator’s mother responds joyfully to the news of another cult attack on campus: “‘This is good,’ my mother said. ‘Now they [the police] cannot say that they have arrested all the cult boys’” (Paragraph 42). Here, self-interest has made their mother ignorant of the extreme horrors of cult violence, so much so that she understands the latest attack to be a positive event. Startling moments of irony such as this offer disturbing insight into the cyclical natures of corruption and violence on both the individual and societal scales.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is a literary device in which the text provides advanced insight into subsequent plot points. Foreshadowing can take explicit forms, such as prophecies or flashforwards, but subtle foreshadowing is also possible. The latter is true of “Cell One,” where Nnamabia’s robbery of the family home is presented as a precursor to his eventual arrest, despite some key differences between the two scenarios.

The narrator concludes her description of the robbery episode by linking it to the arrest. She notes, “The robbery might never have been mentioned again if Nnamabia had not been arrested two years later, in his second year of university” (Paragraph 9). This speculative statement reveals the corollary, and even causal, relationship that she perceives between the two events. In this sense, the foreshadowing reflects the narrator’s pessimistic understanding of her parents’ permissive treatment toward Nnamabia and its political consequences. Adichie thus uses another literary device to illustrate the biases and interpretations of her narrator.

References

References are moments in which the text directly points to an outside piece of literature, media, history, or another cultural touchpoint. This device differs from an allusion in that it is a blatant citation of the outside material (usually naming it outright) as opposed to an indirect evocation. “Cell One” contains several references, often made regarding the popular boys that Nnamabia associates with. When Nnamabia witnesses one of the cult boys struggle with the cruel conditions in prison, the narrator says that “it was as if he had suddenly been made to see that the Incredible Hulk was painted green” (Paragraph 23). This moment instantly places Nigeria within a global cultural context, since the Hulk is an American character that is recognized internationally. In this way, Adichie renders the experience of her characters (particularly their childhood experiences) part of a globalized (and particularly Americanized) culture which draws attention to the cultural effects of colonialism and neocolonialism.