Once Upon a Time By Nadine Gordimer

777 Words4 Pages
Although Gordimer’s title is typical of a fairy tale, the story she weaves is anything but typical. Instead of dealing with characteristics synonymous with fairy tales, the author injects an issue that plagues modern day society: security, fear and peace of mind. Gordmier also comments on racial discrimination (that was and is still a problem for South Africa and nearly all other countries). She uses sentences as “livinghappily ever after” (p. 1 l. 37), the title “Once upon a Time” and words like “witch” to imitate a story forchildren, but this is not a fairytale. This is a story about the distance between people and the ignorance inwhich we see in the world. Gordimer is not trying to write a story for children. She uses the fairytale-likelanguage to clarify the irony in the story.We follow a white family existing by a man, his wife and their son. They live in the suburb, in a city, in SouthAfrica under the apartheid system. The separation between blacks and whites are huge, and every family inthe suburb is secured in any possible way. No one from the outside is allowed in. Even though the husbandkeeps telling his wife that “these people were not allowed into the suburb except as reliable housemaidsand gardeners, so there was nothing to fear..” (p 1, l. 50- p. 2, l. 1), the family keep developing their safetyequipment, in case something could happened. The irony is that the family has no idea what is happeningoutside the fence. They call them “these people” as if they don’t even know that they look like. Graduallythey add more protection to their home as their fear grows. Ultimately and ironically, the protection theyinstall boomerangs back and injures perhaps kills their son.Can you fear too much and therefore hurt yourself? People fear things all the time. Today we fear theterror in the world, and we try to secure the world against it in the best possible ways.
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