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{{tropework}}
{{Infobox book
{{quote box|[[File:cellf_649.jpg|frame]]}}
| title = Cell
| image = cellf 649.jpg
| caption = First edition cover
| author = Stephen King
| central theme =
| elevator pitch = When a signal transmitted via cell-phone turns users into bloodthirsty monsters, a father travels across the country in search of his son.
| genre = Horror
| publication date = January 24, 2006
| source page exists =
| wiki URL =
| wiki name =
}}
 
God's in His heaven, the stock market's riding high, and the world goes on uncaring.
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When the Pulse hits, struggling artist Clay is in Boston, having just landed a lucrative deal for his graphic novel. Fleeing the burning city with new friends Tom and Alice, he hopes to return home to Maine to find out what became of his estranged wife and their young son. En route, the surviving Phoners begin displaying (even more) alarming changes in behavior..
 
Written by [[Stephen King]] and published in 2006. WasA goingfilm toadaptation bewas madein into[[Development aHell]] since movie2006, but after wallowing in [[DevelopmentEli HellRoth]] (possiblybeing becauseinvolved ofuntil he left the bombproduction thatin was2009. ''[[OneCell Missed(film)|The Callfilm was released ten years later in 2016]]''), plansstarring are[[John nowCusack]] revolvingand around[[Samuel L. Jackson]], and with a potentialscript co-written by TVStephen miniseriesKing.
 
----
=== CELL provides examples of: ===
 
{{tropelist}}
* [[All Psychology Is Freudian]] - The Phoners and their violence.
* [[Angrish]] - After going insane, the Phoners speak in a guttural, angry, growling language. A more perfect example comes from later Phoners, {{spoiler|who speak a corrupted, angry variety of English}}.
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* [[Driven to Suicide]] - {{spoiler|The hotel clerk}} kills himself after Clay, Alice, and Tom leave. Clay goes back and finds that he has hung himself.
** The wife of Tom's survivalist neighbor also kills herself after being forced to kill her daughter. Another victim of the Pulse is found to have died from swallowing jagged shards of glass.
* [[Dying Asas Yourself]] - {{spoiler|Ray killing himself.}}
* [[Eagle Land]] - Invoked when Clay, Tom, and Alice break into a redneck home - it contains a gun vault complete with a very illegal machine gun and ammo. Which prove to {{spoiler|''not'' be examples of [[SchrodingersSchrödinger's Gun]].}}
* [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"]] - The Raggedy Man/The President Of Harvard.
* [[Eye Scream]] - {{spoiler|How the Head dies.}}
* [[Laughing Mad]] - Alice is able to hold herself together until the group reaches Tom's house, then has a hysterical breakdown. {{spoiler|She recovers.}} She does it again when the {{spoiler|group kills their first flock.}}
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* [[Identity Amnesia]] - A minor character near the beginning of the book receives an indirect dose of the Pulse from her friend's cell phone conversation, which is still enough to make her forget who she is, where she is, or that she shouldn't run into lampposts.
* [[It Got Worse]] - The book starts off with a traditional zombie apocalypse. Then, slowly, things begin to change for the worse. The zombies {{spoiler|begin to develop a Hive Mind, with different Flocks popping up wherever there are a lot of them}}. Eventually, they become the dominant species on Earth. Then, {{spoiler|things start to get worse for them}}, after an odd turn of events which basically ends with a {{spoiler|human computer virus}}.
* [[ItsIt's Raining Men]] - {{spoiler|Or at least pieces of them. The effect of setting off explosions in crowds of Phoners. The first example gets Clay's group marked by evolved Phoners. The second kills the horde of evolved Phoners that are about to execute them.}}
* [[Kill the Cutie]] - {{spoiler|Alice, of course.}}
* [[Ludicrous Gibs]] - {{spoiler|When Clay activates the rigged bus, it sends body parts raining on them. It also makes sure the Raggedy Man is ''really'' dead - his empty hoodie, with a hole where the heart should be, lands on top of a ride's ticket booth.}}
* [[Ninety Percent90% of Your Brain]] - After the initial blast of crazy wiped out the higher reasoning of anyone talking on their cell phones at the time of the disaster {{spoiler|the Phoners who survive the chaos begin to regain some of their abilities, along with some [[Psychic Powers|entirely new ones]]}}. The characters develop a theory in-Universe that they are using parts of their brains which had been dormant before.
* [[No Ending]] - {{spoiler|When Clay finds Johnny, he [[Traumatic Toggle|tries to fix him by giving him a second dose of the Pulse]]. The book ends just as he puts the phone to his son's ear. Lampshaded by King in his afterword, in which he thinks it wouldn't be right to fully show the effects.}}
* [[Not Using the Z Word]] - Phoners. Of course, they're not ''really'' zombies.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by the main characters actually discussing the fact that they're not calling them zombies.
* [[The Only One Allowed to Defeat You]] - After Clay & Co {{spoiler|blow up a mass of sleeping Phoners, they are declared "untouchables" and made to report for a ceremonial execution by the appointed head of phoners, a man in a Harvard hoodie.}}
* [[Psychic Powers]] - {{spoiler|The Phoners eventually develop these, a few days after being Pulsed. They communicate through telepathy, telekinesis, and the ability to levitate so that that they can get over cars stalled on the roads}}.
* [[SchrodingersSchrödinger's Gun]] - When the main characters decide to stay at Tom's house early in the book, Alice finds a boombox sitting in the closet. They debate turning it on to see if they can pick up any radio stations, even though there is a risk of the Pulse being on the radio waves, too. {{spoiler|In the end, neither they nor the reader ever find out what would have happened if they had decided to go through with it}}.
* [[Shout -Out]] - There are a lot of references to the work of George A. Romero, and he is directly acknowledged in Stephen King's note at the beginning of the book.
** Additionally, Clay's graphic novel contains a character called "The Dark Wanderer", whose initials are R.D., and a wizard called Flack. [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|Does This Remind You Of]] [[The Dark Tower|Anything?]]
* [[Slasher Smile]] - The President of Harvard is ''always'' smiling an unsettling grin. {{spoiler|The protagonists even imagine he died smiling that smile of his, finding one piece of his Harvard sweater to read [[Evil Laugh|HAR]].}}
* [[Spear Carrier]] - Several characters, as the protagonists travel to Maine, literally pass in the night and exchange tidbits of info, such as New Hampshire closing its borders and some changes in Phoner behavior.
* [[Strawman Political]] - The crazy old lady who the group runs into leaving Boston.
* [[Technically Living Zombie]] - The Phoners, but only in the beginning.
* [[Title Drop]] - Near the end of the book, when {{spoiler|the Clay and the other Flock killers are imprisoned at the Northern Counties Expo}}, Clay passes the time by 'drawing' comics in his mind. The one he works on is called ''Cell''.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]] - When Clay separates from the group, he observes a Corvette and another [[Cool Car]] racing on the wreck-cluttered highway. {{spoiler|Needless to say, one of the cars crashes, disembowelingdisembowelling its occupant spectacularly.}}.
* [[Traumatic Toggle]]: In the final moments of the book, Clay attempts to invoke this trope with Johnny, hoping to fix him by giving him a second dose of the Pulse. The book ends before we can find out if it worked.
* [[Voice of the Legion]] - The Raggedy Man {{spoiler|is the representative of a large flock}}, and is able to use other people as his voice (since he is unable to speak on his own). He does this with almost all of the main characters at one point or another, including with Alice, {{spoiler|while she is dying on the side of road after being attacked by Gunner}}.
* [[Word of God]] - King confirmed on his website that {{spoiler|things turned out alright for Clay's son, Johnny.}}
* [[Zombie Gait]] - The Phoners don't use a classic zombie shuffle until the first hive-minds are made.
* [[Zombie Apocalypse]] - On a '''massive''' scale.
* [[Zombie Infectee]] - [[Playing Withwith a Trope|Played with]]. Evolved Phoners have been "infecting" non-Phoners by placing signs directing desperate survivors to no-coverage areas, and infect them with a corrupt version of the Signal. {{spoiler|Clay finds his son in such a state, but at the point the boy was infected, the Signal was corrupt enough to render the victim relatively harmless. It's possible they can be [[Traumatic Toggle|reverted with another dose of The Signal]]; which is what Clay prepares to test as the book ends.}}
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Works By Stephen King{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Horror Literature]]
[[Category:CellLiterature of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Trope]]
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