Setting

Physical setting

The short story “Jumping Monkey Hill” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set at a resort in Cape Town, South Africa. The time setting is not specified but since the story was published in 2006 we can assume the story is set sometime in the early 2000s. 

The resort where the story takes place is called Jumping Monkey Hill which is also the title of the story. The setting is described right at the beginning of the story: 

The cabins all had thatch roofs. Names like BABOON LODGE and PORCUPINE PLACE were hand-painted beside the wooden doors that led out to cobblestone paths and the windows were left open so that guests woke up to the rustling of the jacaranda leaves and the steady calming crash of the sea’s waves.

The resort is posh and full of rich white tourists who do not seem to care about Africans: “the kind of place where she imagined affluent foreign tourists would dart around taking pictures of lizards and then return home still unaware that there were more black people than red-c...