Once Upon A Time

“Once Upon A Time,” by Nadine Gordimer starts off in an awkward way, but I like it. The author begins by telling the reader about how she doesn’t write children’s stories. She then goes to tell how one night when she couldn’t sleep, she tells herself a bedtime story. How ironic because bedtime stories are for children. I like the sentence that says, “A woman was murdered (how do they say it) in broad daylight…,” because its like the author is riducling the suggestion that murders only happen at night time.

The author does not use quotes when telling what someone said. She simply puts “she/he said” after the sentences. The story that the author tells involves a “perfect” family that lives in the suburbs. It starts off by saying that the family lived happily ever after and this was often repeated. The more it is repeated, the more it shows that they weren’t perfect. Another phrase that was often repeated is “loved very much.” This made the ending very ironic.

The family seems really uppity and they act as is they are better than others. I believe that there is also a sense of racism because of the remarks about “these people,” made in the second paragraph of the story. I find that the level of security that they began to have was ridiculous. These people were taking there precautions to an extremely unneeded level. It was sort of like the people in the suburbs were competing over who had the best security.

After all the precautions taken to secure their family from harm, the Dragon’s Teeth gate ends up harming their son. I know that there is some sort of lesson to be learned from this story, but I can’t put my finger on it ( I know…cliché).