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Ambiguity And Irony In Sarah Koenig's Serial

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The art of storytelling is one full of powerful devices. In Sarah Koenig’s Serial, our world is crammed full of narrative acrobatics and linguistic precariousness, courtesy of a podcast so grounded in language, the audience is ultimately lead to one of the most prevalent themes: ambiguity. Koenig consistently provides her listeners with such damning evidence throughout the podcast, and then almost always provides a stream of doubt: “Maybe Adnan misspoke… maybe he’s lying… maybe he’s hiding something…”. Serial becomes a courtroom, Sarah Koenig becomes the defense and prosecution, and the podcast’s audience becomes the new jury to the Adnan Syed case. However, unlike Adnan’s real jury, who left the courtroom with enough conviction to sentence …show more content…

However, the Nisha Call happens at 3:32 pm that same day. The problem is that Nisha says she spoke to Jay and she spoke to Adnan during that time, not only placing them together, but discrediting Adnan in front of the jury. The prosecution, of course, uses this evidence to their biased advantage: Adnan called Nisha during the time he was supposedly in school, proving Jay’s story to be true, and Adnan to be a liar. The prosecution paves their narrative perfectly for the jury. Aside from the fact that detectives showed Jay the call logs, aside from the fact that Jay had not yet begun working at the porn store Nisha mentioned, and aside from the fact that prosecution purposely hid that information from the jury by cutting Nisha’s testimony off… the wording of Prosecutor Kevin Urick’s questions towards Nisha on the stand paint a subjective narrative that basically convicts Adnan for the jury. Prosecutor Kevin Urick asks Nisha about when the phone call was placed, and she replies “I would think towards the evening, but I can’t be sure.” This isn’t good enough to place Adnan with Jay at 3:32 PM. So, Prosecutor Urick specifically asks Nisha if “the 3:32 call on the log, could it be that same call…?” Nisha says “It could be, but I’m not sure.” Prosecution

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