"Once Upon a Time"

"Once Upon a Time"
by Nadine Gordimer

One point I would initially like to make: I like that the main story was enclosed in the frame story, which we don't learn much about.  The speaker is tired and begins to tell herself a story, which is the focus of the short story as a whole.
This goes without saying, but this story was just messssed up!  The motivation behind the main actions of this story seems simple at first, but then becomes extreme.  At the beginning, the families in the quiet, beautiful suburb simply want to feel safe and protected.   I did feel like the "YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED" sign was kind of a foreshadowing that something would go horribly wrong, but I read on to find out. (It turns out that I was spot on).  Back to the motivation- the wife of the family is anxious about the riots happening outside the suburbs, so the husband reassures her and continues to instal more and more security- electronic gates, an alarm system, burglar bars on the window, and a concrete wall.  The ironic thing is, these increasingly protective and paranoid measures do not protect the family any more than before; they only serve as ugly marks on a once beautiful suburb.  The family's desire to be safe does not make them any safer, but only results in harm.  Ironically, after all the security, there where even more intrusions; nothing could stop it.
The story began with love and fairy tales- "there were a man and his wife who loved each other very much and were living happily ever after.  They had a little boy, and they loved him very much.  They had a cat and a dog that the little boy loved very much" (Gordimer, 232).  The wise old witch gave the boy a book of fairy tales.  In a way, the story ended with a form of love and fairy tales:  the boy wanted to be like the Prince, so he crawled through the barbed wire; and the gardener and the rest of the family showed love when the tried with all their might to get the boy's body out of the tangled wire.