Once Upon A Time

Once Upon A Time (1989) by Nadine Gordimer is the tale of an affluent White family desperate to keep their house secure. As Black people journey into their neighborhood looking for work, they add more and more security features to their home. Their final addition is lethal barbed wire along the perimeter of their home. After hearing the story of Sleeping Beauty, the family’s little boy tries to navigate the barbed wire, like the prince in the story. The boy becomes trapped, and the barbed wire kills him.

Quotes

• before he was knifed by a casual labourer he had dismissed without pay.
  • Page 68
• people of another colour,” as the narrator calls them, are rioting in the townships outside the city .
  • Page 69.
• pure concentration camp style.
  • Page 72.
• bleeding mass of the boy into the house
  • page 72
• I reply that I don’t write children’s stories; and he writes back that at a recent congress/book fair/seminar a certain novelist said every writer ought to write at least one story for children. I think of sending a postcard saying I don’t accept that I ‘ought’ to write anything.
  • Page 67
• A creaking of the kind made by the weight carried by one foot after another along a wooden floor. I listened. I felt the apertures of my ears distend with concentration.
  • Page 67
• “I have no burglar bars, no gun under the pillow. But I have the same fears as people who do take these precautions, and my windowpanes are thin as rime, could shatter like a wine glass.
  • Page Page 67
• "It was not possible to insure the house, the swimming pool or the car against riot damage. There were riots, but these were outside the city, where people of another color were quartered. These people were not allowed into the suburb except as reliable housemaids and gardeners, so there was nothing to fear, the husband told the wife. Yet she was afraid that some day such people might come up the street and tear off the plaque YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and open the gates and stream in... Nonsense, my dear, said the husband, there are police and soldiers and tear-gas and guns to keep them away.
  • Narrator
• The man and his wife, talking of the latest armed robbery in the suburb, were distracted by the sight of the little boy's pet cat effortlessly arriving over the seven-foot wall, descending first with a rapid bracing of extended forepaws down on the sheer vertical surface, and then a graceful launch, landing with swishing tail within the property."
  • Narrator
• "...a loss made keener by the property owner's knowledge that the thieves wouldn't even have been able to appreciate what it was they were drinking.
  • Narrator
• the trusted housemaid said these were loafers and tsotsis, who would come and tie and shut her in a cupboard.
  • Narrator
• When the man and wife and little boy took the pet dog for a walk round the neighborhood streets they no longer paused to admire this show of roses or that perfect lawn; these were hidden behind an array of different varieties of security fences, walls and devices.
  • Narrator
• And it was true that from that day on the cat slept in the little boy's bed and kept to the garden, never risking a try at breaching security.
  • Narrator

External links

• super summary
• gradesaver