The Thing Around Your Neck

In “Cell One,” Nnamabia begins as a cliche of the typical Nsukka Campus professor’s son, charming, delinquent, and irreverent. Focused entirely on his own momentary satisfaction, he steals and sells his mother’s jewelry for alcohol, not appearing to have any understanding of the wrongness of his actions. He also faces little to no pushback from his family for his behavior, the custom in the community being that parents pretend the behavior is not happening. It is partly due to his looks and personality that this behavior is allowed to continue. His mother’s favorite, he inherited her beauty. He is also deeply charming and is able to convince others to quickly like him and bring him into the fold. He is also rather cunning—even though his plan to hide the theft of the jewelry under the guise of a robbery doesn’t work, he does have a plan, and he does later successfully ingratiate himself to the leaders of his prison cell.

His development within the prison gives complexity to his character that didn’t exist at the start of the story, for the narrator or Nnamabia himself. When he begins to experience genuine distress over the innocent old man he is imprisoned with and the abuses he is suffering, he begins to be able to recognize injustice and suffering beyond his own.