Once Upon A Time
...n a time” beginning, a happy family of good law-abiding people, who license their dog, insure against fire, flood and damage, and a wise old witch, the author employs several other fairy tale devices in the story. First, there is the use of simple, repetitive language like that in a fairy tale: “in a house, in a suburb, in a city there was 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 …” ONCE UPON A TIME” by Nadine Gordimer Nadine Gordimer wrote the story “Once Upon A Time” to caution her readers about a threat in all of our lives. This story reflects the dangers of allowing us to become focused on the wrong things in life. Taking our distractions to an extreme can destroy our quality of life. In this society, discrimination caused a chain reaction of events that led to the death of a young boy. The story’s opening paragraph depicts a perfect family taking all the normal precautions to keep them safe. “It was not possible to insure the house…against riot damage”(253) tells us that they were not able to protect themselves f...