Cell One

How does Adichie use grotesque imagery throughout the story?

The police comprise an essential group of secondary characters in “Cell One.” Identify and analyze a key piece of police dialogue. How does it indicate the larger systems of political corruption that Adichie illustrates throughout the story?

“Cell One” was originally published in The New Yorker, an American magazine with a predominantly American audience. More broadly, Adichie’s work has been widely consumed and lauded in western settings. In what ways does “Cell One” challenge non-Nigerian, and more broadly non-African, readers to adjust their understandings of Nigerian existence and experience?

The narrator views her parents’ inability to hold Nnamabia accountable for his bad behavior as a direct cause of his arrest, and this sentiment is echoed by a policeman at the end of the story. How does the structure of the story support and/or undermine this notion of parental blame?

At the end of the story, after Nnamabia reveals why he was transferred to a new prison and beaten by the police, the narrator imagines in detail his defense of the old man. What is the effect of the ending occurring in this imaginary space, and how does the narrator’s imagination relate to the themes of “Cell One”?

Consider the colonial history of Nigeria and analyze “Cell One” through a postcolonial lens. Identify specific moments in the text in which colonial influence, and postcolonial experience, is visible. How do characters in the story relate to colonial powers, and what influence does this relationship exert over the course of the narrative?

In The Thing Around Your Neck, “Cell One” is presented alongside a number of Adichie’s other short stories, including “The Headstrong Historian.” Read that story, and then consider thematic connections between the two. How do these works respond to and build upon one another? Alternately, are there any key ways in which they diverge?

Adichie makes heavy use of ellipsis in “Cell One,” frequently jumping forward in time between episodes of the narrative. What does Adichie achieve by inserting these time jumps, and how does this device contribute to broader dynamics within the story?