"Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer

                The most intriguing and significant literary technique which Nadine Gordimer employs in her short story “Once Upon a Time” is her utilization of the frame story technique. By framing the story of the perfect family living happily ever after in their dream home within the context of the writer telling herself a bedtime story after fearing for her life underscores the central theme of the story. The “fairytale” itself addresses an average family with a nice home in a presumably wealthy neighborhood with all the luxuries that a stereotypical American family would be assumed to possess, such as a dog, a cat, and a swimming pool. However, when many dangerous individuals began to loiter within their neighborhood, robbing homes and begging for work on a regular basis, the mother and father took heed to the warning of the “witch” (the father’s mother) to never accommodate any of these men off of the street. Ultimately, took such drastic measures to ensure their security as to install a very gruesome contraption of metal atop a very high fence along the perimeter of their home, and, while at play, their young boy accidentally entrapped himself within the security system and was murdered. The moral of the story lies in the fact that the family’s insatiable fear of any danger whatsoever befalling the family was what ultimately led to their demise. While fear is an inevitable aspect of life, and concern for the safety of one’s family is certainly an honorable notion, Gordimer sought to convey through her story the criticality of not going so far to protect oneself as to prevent oneself from actually living life. The fact that the boy died while adventurously reenacting a fairytale and impersonating a prince saving his damsel in distress by becoming entrapped in the security system is symbolic of the fact that the boy’s enthusiasm for life was choked by the parents’ unconquerable fear of danger. This central theme was also embodied by other neighbors of the parents. All families within the neighborhood were so cautious as to avoid burglary that they installed burglar alarms within their home; however, the systems were faulty. Oftentimes, burglars would in fact take advantage of the system’s malfunctions and burglarize a home while the systems were sounding unnecessarily so as to have the opportunity to ransack the home when they could not be heard over the blaring alarms. By use of these examples, Gordimer was clearly intending to reinforce the idea that obsessive fear and precautionary actions can actually produce more harm that benefits.

                In addition to conveying the theme of the importance of being wary to not be too cautious in life, Gordimer also instilled the notion within her readers that the horrors people fear most frequently are often worsened by fear itself. Gordimer implements the use of the frame story technique to express this theme. Irony is evident within the “fairytale” in the sense that all the families in the novel feared the ominous beggars and burglars outside their homes when, ultimately, their own actions caused their own demise. The mother and father installed a security gate, and their son died; likewise, neighbors established security alarms, and they were robbed under the cover of the noise of the faulty alarms. The things which the characters in the fairytale actually feared would have caused them no harm had they been left alone, but the family’s own precautions should have been what they feared. Gordimer intentionally reflects this theme by using a frame story to discuss how she feared the noises outside her bedroom while falling asleep. Gordimer admits to suspecting a murderer looming outside her door while she was “reading every faintest sound, identifying and classifying its possible threat” (Gordimer, 232), yet she quickly discovered that the noise was coming from underneath her house where miners were busy at work. Gordimer should have been afraid the lack of sturdiness in the structure of her house, yet she focuses her energy on fearing a nonexistent entity. In this manner, Gordimer employed the use of a frame story for extra emphasis on the theme of not allowing fear to overcome one so much that the fear itself actually becomes the true threat.