Once Upon a Time

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1989

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Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Literary Devices

Tragic Irony

Irony occurs when an individual’s actions have precisely the opposite of their intended effect. As a literary device, tragic or dramatic irony is a state in which the reader knows that a character’s actions will bring about a tragic ending, while the character himself does not. Tragic irony as a narrative device builds tension because the reader can see the inevitable conclusion of a situation while the protagonist remains unaware of it. Knowing the result but helpless to intervene, the reader is at the mercy of the plot’s unfolding.

Gordimer uses this technique in “Once Upon a Time” when she seeds the ingredients for the disaster while distracting the reader with the primary narrative. When the husband’s mother gifts the family the extra bricks for the wall, she also gives a “Space Man outfit” and fairy tale book to the boy (71). At this point, the reader cannot know what, if any, consequences the costume or the book may have. As it turns out, the space suit is of no consequence; it is merely a detail to distract from the importance of the fairy tale book.

Another way that Gordimer sets up tragic irony is by distracting the reader with the narrative of the cat’s attempts to evade the family’s security measures. The cat seems to be the one in the most danger of becoming ensnared in the razor wire, and when the reader realizes that the cat avoids it, the story’s tension dissipates. It therefore comes as a surprise when the boy climbs the wall and becomes entangled in the wire—though the cat’s adventure over the wall also foreshadows the boy’s, the narrative danger seems to have passed just as it arrives.

Though the outcome of tragic irony is unforeseen by the characters, it is inevitable based on their actions. There is often a moral or suggested lesson in narratives that rely on tragic irony because the characters bring about their own destruction. Their folly is often an excess of emotion or obsession that clouds the protagonists’ judgment, leading them to unknowingly harm themselves or someone they love. The first level of the tragedy is the unintended outcome—in this case, the boy’s death. The second level of tragedy is the characters’ realization of what they have done. “Once Upon a Time,” however, does not provide a denouement that depicts the parents’ reaction to the boy’s death. This omission allows readers to make their own determination about the family’s possible reaction and to focus on the story’s broader significance as a parable about apartheid, fear, and violence.

Fairy Tale Genre

Western fairy tales generally have common narrative and thematic elements that make the genre a specific form of storytelling. These conventions make the genre recognizable, so that a reader will know when they are encountering a fairy tale as opposed to another genre of short story. There is no single complete list of fairy tale conventions, but folklorists such as Vladimir Propp, in his 1958 book Morphology of the Folktale, have studied and collected numerous elements that are common to fairy tales and traditional stories. The fairy tale in “Once Upon a Time” is told within the framework of a literary short story, and Gordimer uses several fairy tale elements in her story.

The most recognizable genre element of the fairy tale is the standard language of its opening and ending. The phrase “once upon a time” immediately signals a fairy tale, and the reader expects the ending “happily ever after” to follow. Gordimer employs these elements unconventionally: she titles the short story “Once Upon a Time” and begins the fairy tale with what should be the ending: the “happily ever after” phase of the family’s story. In this way, she prompts the reader to consider that the fairy-tale life the family has achieved is only possible during a time when their wealth shields them from their political reality.

Another common element of fairy tales is their generalized characters and context. Fairy tales are usually set “long ago and far away,” or in an undisclosed time frame. In both cases, the convention signals that the story occurs in a time and place far from the reader’s own. This distancing of the narrative gives fairy tales a timeless quality, which is one reason they can be told across many generations. Gordimer follows this convention by giving her story a generic setting: “In a house in a suburb in a city” (68). Adding details would undermine the folkloric presentation.

Similarly, the characters are generalized figures rather than people with complex characteristics or desires. Gordimer provides no details, including names, for her characters. Rather, it is their relationships to one another that are important. The detail that the husband and wife love each other and that they love their son provides motivation for their actions while remaining a general human emotion rather than a quality specific to those characters. The protagonists of fairy tales are often royal heroes and heroines, or everyday individuals whom the plot thrusts into a situation that requires them to act heroically. In Gordimer’s fairy tale, no single character is the protagonist. The husband and wife work together to implement the desired security measures, acting in the role of the hero in their efforts to protect their home from anticipated danger. The boy, too, imagines himself in a heroic role. However, instead of achieving safety or rescue, these characters produce a dangerous environment for themselves.

Characters in fairy tales are either good or evil. An evil character is often temporarily disguised as a friend or ally. Reinterpretations of fairy tales, on the other hand, question the moral binary of good and evil in favor of a more nuanced reading of the morality and lessons that fairy tales traditionally impart. Gordimer invites readers to question whether a binary understanding of good and evil can function in the real world, or if that type of thinking is dangerous.

Fairy tales have a standard plot. The plot catalyst, or inciting incident, is a recognition of the lack of something (or someone) the hero needs. This need prompts the hero to begin their quest. In the quest to retrieve the needed object, the hero faces trials and encounters a helper—often a magical being, such as a wizard or witch—who gives the hero a magic tool that will help them on their quest. The hero also encounters a villain who has taken the object (or person) and the hero must use their tools, as well as their courage and intelligence, to defeat the villain and complete their quest. Upon completing the quest, the hero often receives a reward.

Gordimer sets up her fairy tale plot in a similar way: the family feels it lacks security and embarks on a quest to fortify its home—metaphorically its castle—against the anonymous, imagined intruders who serve as the story’s villains. The husband’s mother is the “wise old witch,” or helper figure, who gifts them items to aid in their quest. However, Gordimer’s fairy tale ends tragically, which prevents a “happily ever after” ending and casts doubt on the nobility of the quest’s purpose.

Sentence Structure

At just over 2,000 words, “Once Upon a Time” is short even for a short story. Gordimer counterbalances the briefness of the narrative with long sentences, many of which contain words and clauses joined by conjunctions. This additive syntax allows the author to work central themes and details into the narrative without placing too much emphasis on them. For example, most of the sentences in the story’s opening are of short or average length, with few dependent clauses. The first long sentence is the narrator’s description of her house’s construction:

The house that surrounds me while I sleep is built on undermined ground; far beneath my bed, the floor, the house's foundations, the stopes and passages of gold mines have hollowed the rock, and when some face trembles, detaches and falls, three thousand feet below, the whole house shifts slightly, bringing uneasy strain to the balance and counterbalance of brick, cement, wood and glass that hold it as a structure around me (68).

The flow of the sentence mirrors the long, sliding movements of the rock beneath the house and cements the connection between the depth of the mine and the surface on which the house sits. Gordimer could have easily broken the sentence up into three separate sentences, based on the number of independent clauses. Instead, she links the first two independent clauses with a semicolon, and the second and third clauses with “and.” At the end of this long flow of words, the descriptive phrase that enumerates the house’s construction materials makes them seem more like individual elements than parts of a whole, creating a sense of the house’s precariousness.

Gordimer also uses sentence structure to highlight important themes. When the narrator introduces the family in the fairy tale, she uses anaphora, the technique of repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of a sentence. Four sentences in the paragraph begin with “they had,” which highlights the family’s orientation toward ownership and personal wealth (68). The repetition signals a simple mode of storytelling, which one might use in telling a child a bedtime story. The first time the wife asks for more security, the husband replies that “there are police and soldiers and tear-gas and guns” to keep township residents away from their suburb (69). Like the repetition of “they had,” joining four nouns using “and” signals a childhood mode of storytelling, but because the images are violent, the syntax produces a jarring effect.

The most potent multiclause sentence is the story’s climax, in which the boy climbs the wall and becomes ensnared in the razor wire. In the sentence that begins “Next day,” Gordimer joins four independent clauses using punctuation and conjunctions to surprise the reader with the plot’s rapid escalation (72). The effect is one of inescapability. The long sentence does not allow the reader to pause or reorient themselves, as the clauses are joined by commas, not separated into separate sentences by periods. The story’s final sentence likewise joins multiple dependent clauses and vivid images that depict the high emotional stakes of the scene. Because the sentence is long and chaotic, its ending is abrupt. The forward momentum of the frantic action ceases with the final period, as the characters enter the house and disappear from the reader’s view.