“Once Upon a Time” was foremost published in 1989. Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 near Johannesburg. South Africa. She graduated from the University of Witwatersrand. A fecund author. Gordimer has published more than 20 books of fiction. When Nadine Gordimer was asked to compose a children’s narrative she replied with a short narrative called “Once Upon a Time” . Although Gordimer’s rubric is typical of a fairy narrative. the narrative she weaves is anything but typical. Alternatively of covering with features synonymous with fairy narratives. the writer injects an issue that plagues modern twenty-four hours society: security. fright and peace of head. Gordmier besides remarks on racial favoritism ( that was and is still a job for South Africa and about all other states ) .
The narrative opens with Gordimer awakened by a bump in the dark and can non travel back to kip due to her fright ( a similar state of affairs many people have experienced ) . “I have no burglar bars. no gun under my pillow. but I have the same frights as people who do take these precautions…” To better convey the thought of society’s preoccupation with safety. Gordimer begins to state herself a bedtime narrative. In the narrative there is a household who is “living merrily of all time after” ; they live in the suburbs. hold a mini-van. pets and a small male child. Everything seems so blissful. except the family’s arrested development with their ain security. The household feels they must set their trust in security devices in order to experience at peace. For a brief while. the household feels secure by posting a plaque saying “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED” over the silhouette of a prospective interloper. Not excessively long after this. the old. familiar feeling of uncertainness and uncomfortableness creeps back in.
The household so decides to put in burglar bars in their place. At this point it is rather apparent that the family’s chase of security has made them actual captives in the really place they live in. “From the window and door in the house where they were populating merrily of all time after. now saw the trees and the sky through bars. ” Conveyed in a somewhat more hushed mode. is the issue of racial favoritism or at least racial tenseness in the narrative. The writer implies that the household may be somewhat racist by saying that the plaque on the family’s gate did non denominate black or white. “He was masked ; it could non be said if he was black or white and hence proved the belongings proprietor was no racist” . Riots outside the metropolis besides contribute to the thought of racial tenseness.
The lone black people allowed ( in the suburbs ) where the household lived were nurserymans and housekeepers and yet. even these persons brought edginess to the household sense of wellbeing. “It was a beautiful suburb. spoilt merely by [ black people’s ] presence” . The presence of these persons bothers the household so much that they raise a seven-foot tall wall around their place to slake their lingering feelings of insecurity. After happening footmarks ( that did non belong to them ) on the street side of the wall. the household lines razor wire outside the seven-foot tall wall.
Finally experiencing safe with the new. apparently unsurmountable wire defence. the female parent decides to read a fairy narrative ( to her small male child ) about a prince who dashes through a brush of irritants to come in a castle where he saves Sleeping Beauty. The following twenty-four hours. the small male child ( with the precocious imaginativeness that many kids have ) decides to salvage Sleeping Beauty ( merely like the prince ) conceive ofing the razor wire as the brush he must acquire through to rouse the princess. Once inside the steel tunnel. the razor coils rapidly trap and kill the small male child in his battle to get away.
In “Once Upon a Time” Gordimer addresses the issue of insecurity in modern twenty-four hours society. She besides examines racial tenseness and favoritism that many parts of South Africa and many other states still face. Through the decease of the small male child. Gordimer wanted to demo us that fright ( non what we are needfully afraid of ) is what necessarily will make us in. On a lighter note. I think Gordimer besides wrote this fairy narrative to jeer at the individual who had the audacity to state her what she should compose.
