Cell One

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses police violence and gang violence.

The bandwagon effect is a social phenomenon in which people adopt certain behaviors, mannerisms, and ideologies primarily because they are popular with other people. In “Cell One,” almost all characters engage in this conformist mode of behavior, often to the detriment of larger society. As such, Adichie uses the dangers of the bandwagon effect as a stark warning to readers. The limits between safe and dangerous forms of collective thinking are blurred, with tragic consequences for individuals such as Nnamabia, who ignorantly emulates popular behaviors.

Nnamabia’s inclination toward the bandwagon effect is the most obvious of all the characters, since he is the protagonist and observed the most closely by the narrator. “Cell One’s” initial robbery episode lays out the predisposition very clearly, with the narrator asserting that he stole the jewelry “because other sons of professors were doing it” (Paragraph 6). This character trait is taken to extreme lengths during the cult craze on campus when Nnamabia’s involvement cannot be confirmed but is highly suspected by his family. Adichie writes, “[c]ult boys were popular, and Nnamabia was very popular. Boys yelled out his nickname—‘The Funk!’—and shook his hand whenever he passed by, and girls, especially the popular ones, hugged him for too long when he said hello” (Paragraph 11). However, even though Nnamabia’s bandwagon tendencies are the most blatant in “Cell One,” he is also the only character who makes a conscious effort to reform himself, eventually confronting injustice in the prison when all the other prisoners laugh at it. This demonstrates the morality of jumping of foregoing bandwagon thinking. 

Despite being less scrutinized than Nnamabia, most other characters in the story are also guilty of bandwagon thinking and behavior. The narrator’s parents actually shift toward bandwagon ideology after Nnamabia is imprisoned out of fear that political speech will get them in trouble with the men who could kill their son. The narrator resentfully observes, “My father no longer gave a monologue… on how illiterate and corrupt the police were… My mother did not mumble that the policemen were symptoms of a larger malaise” (Paragraph 26). The collectivist complacency, born out of a sense of coercion and helplessness, has a sadder tone than Nnamabia’s swaggering quest for popularity. Nevertheless, it is evident that the parents adopt a collective mode of speech and behavior because the bandwagon is a safer space for them than individualism. This suggests that the bandwagon effect is a means to control and maintain homogeneity in a system, which underlines the bravery involved in foregoing bandwagon thinking.

In the end, Adichie portrays the bandwagon effect as a self-sustaining phenomenon by depicting how one character’s initial dangerous behavior forces other characters to also buy into the dangerous social environment. She also demonstrates that those who self-analyze are more likely to adjust their bandwagon mentality when confronted with it. Within the scheme of “Cell One,” Nnamabia must complete this process of self-analysis within the violent confines of his prison cell.