Previous
Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Once Upon a Time, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Wealth Inequality and Fear
Apartheid, Racism, and Property
Separation and the Illusion of Security
Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
When someone writes to the narrator to ask if she’ll write a short story for children, she declines on the grounds that she doesn’t write for children. The letter-writer pushes back, saying that he once heard a novelist insist that all writers should write at least one short story for children. The narrator considers writing back that she doesn’t feel like she has to write anything.
The story immediately introduces the theme of storytelling through the narrator’s occupation as a writer, the fact that she’s narrating these events to the reader, and the man’s request that she contribute a short story to an anthology. The narrator’s refusal to tell a certain kind of story—in this case, a children’s story—begins to hint at the idea that people must be careful about the stories they tell themselves.
Active
Themes
The narrator recalls being woken up suddenly the previous night by a creaking sound, which sounds suspiciously like someone walking on a wooden floor. Ears perked, she strains to hear the creaking sound to discern if it’s moving closer to her bedroom door. She doesn’t have security bars on the windows, nor does she have a gun, but that doesn’t mean she’s not fearful. The narrator recounts how, last year, a woman was murdered inside a house two blocks away in the middle of the day, and an old man and his vicious guard dogs were killed by a worker whom the man had let go without pay.
It seems that the narrator’s choice to not protect her home from intruders is a conscious one. Clues throughout the story—plus Gordimer’s own history—suggests that this story is set in apartheid-era South Africa, which was a time of severe violence, racism, and white supremacy. Given this context, readers can reasonably assume that the narrator—implied to be a white woman—is making a political and ethical decision not to insulate herself from the non-white people who are moved to violence and criminality under such an oppressive system. However, that doesn’t mean she’s not afraid of the very real threat of violence unfolding in her own neighborhood, as she immediately assumes that she’s about to be killed or robbed.
Active
Themes
Lying in bed in the dark, the narrator already feels like a victim of a crime, and her heart beats wildly in her chest. However, she soon realizes that the creaking sound isn’t from an intruder’s footsteps. Her house is built atop of mines, so whenever chunks of hollowed-out rock fall away thousands of feet below where the narrator sleeps, the foundation of the house creaks slightly.
Active
Themes
As her pulse slows, the narrator thinks of the Chopi and Tsonga migrant workers who toil away down in the mines. She imagines that the mine underneath her house may be no longer in use, or it may now be the gravesite of all the men who were working there before the rock fell away. Unable to fall back asleep, the narrator begins to tell herself a bedtime story.
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In the narrator’s story, a loving husband and wife and their beloved little boy are “living happily ever after” in a suburban house. The little boy has a cat and dog, both of whom he loves dearly. The family has a trailer for camping and a swimming pool that’s enclosed by a fence to prevent the little boy from falling in and drowning. The housemaid is “absolutely trustworthy,” and their “itinerant gardener” came highly recommended—after all, the husband’s mother, “that wise old witch,” had warned them to not just hire anyone off the street.
The family has medical insurance and disaster insurance, and they’re members of the local Neighborhood Watch organization, hence the plaque reading, “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED” that’s affixed to their front gates. On the plaque is the silhouette of a masked intruder, but it’s impossible to tell if he’s black or white, which “therefore proved the property owner was no racist.”
The one thing the family’s insurance doesn’t cover, however, is riot damage. But the riots take place outside of city limits, where black people are “quartered,” and black people are only allowed into the suburb as “reliable housemaids and gardeners.” Still, the wife fears that “such people” might one day invade their suburb and surge through their front gates; her husband reminds her that law enforcement officers have guns and tear gas “to keep them away.”
Active
Themes
To appease his wife—and because extreme violence is taking place just outside the city—the man has electronically controlled gates installed in front of the house, complete with a speaker system that allows visitors to relay a message to someone inside the house. The little boy is delighted and uses it as a walkie-talkie when he plays cops and robbers with his friends.
Active
Themes
Burglaries begin taking place across the suburb, and the couple’s housemaid knows of a fellow housemaid who was tied up and locked in a cupboard by robbers while her employers were gone. This worries the couple’s housemaid because she, too, is often left alone in the house and in charge of her employers’ possessions. She implores the couple to add security bars on the windows and doors and to invest in an alarm system; the wife agrees, and the extra security features are promptly installed. The family now sees the sky and nature outside through metal bars, and the little boy’s cat sets off the alarm at night.
The neighbors’ alarm systems are also triggered by cats or mice. Alarms go off so frequently in the suburbs that they begin to sound like cicadas or frogs humming in the background of everyday life. Thieves take advantage of this and carry out their robberies while the alarms are blaring so that homeowners don’t hear them coming and going, arms laden with jewels, television sets, and expensive clothing.
Eventually, other black people besides just “trusted housemaids and gardeners” begin loitering in the suburbs, looking for work—but the man and his wife heed to the husband’s mother’s warning about not hiring people off of the streets. Moved by the sight of people begging, the woman orders the housemaid to bring them bread and tea, but the housemaid refuses, insisting that the beggars are tsotsis (criminals) who will tie her up. The husband agrees and tells his wife that she would only be “encourag[ing] them” and that “They are looking for their chance.”
When the husband realizes that the electronic gates, alarm system, and security bars won’t prevent an intruder from climbing over the wall into the garden, the wife suggests that they make the wall higher. For Christmas, the husband’s mother, “the wise old witch,” gifts the couple with extra bricks for their wall. The little boy receives a book of fairytales and a Space Man costume.
Active
Themes
The robberies and intrusions continue in the suburb at all hours of the day and night. One day, as the husband and wife discuss this, they watch the little boy’s cat effortlessly scale the seven-foot wall. The side of the wall facing the street is marked up with the cat’s paw prints—as well as the outline of the kind of shabby running shoes that the loiterers in the suburb wear.
Active
Themes
Later, the man and his wife take the little boy and his dog out for a walk around the neighborhood. While the couple used to leisurely admire their neighbors’ roses or perfectly manicured lawns, they now scrutinize their neighbors’ various security systems. Some people have opted for the utilitarian option of shards of glass embedded in concrete walls, while other neighbors attempt to blend spears, iron grilles, and lances into their specific architectural styles. When the little boy runs ahead, the husband and wife discuss the pros and cons of each security system.
Eventually, the husband and wife settle on a security system that is by far the ugliest of them all—it looks like something out of a concentration camp—but is hopefully the most effective in warding off intruders. The security system consists of a series of metal coils attached all the way up the length of the house. Each coil is spiked with jagged razor-sharp thorns, ensuring that anyone who tries to climb up the coils—or even climb out of the coil—will immediately be shredded to bits in “a struggle getting bloodier and bloodier.”
Active
Themes
The next day, workmen from the Dragon’s Teeth security company install the razor wire on the house where the family is “living happily ever after.” Now wrapped in metal, the house gleams harshly in the sun. The husband assures his wife that the metal will weather over time and take on a softer look, but she tells him that he’s wrong—the metal is weather-proof. They both hope that the cat won’t try to scale the walls anymore. Luckily, the cat stays either in the little boy’s bed or in the garden and doesn’t try to climb.
Active
Themes
At night, the woman reads the little boy the story of Sleeping Beauty from the book of fairytales that the husband’s mother got him for Christmas. The following day, the little boy pretends to be the brave Prince who must fight his way through a dense thicket of thorns in order to get to Sleeping Beauty and awaken her with a kiss. Deciding that the new razor wire wall will be the perfect thicket of thorns, the little boy lugs a ladder over to the way and wriggles into a coil.
Immediately, the razor thorns dig into the little boy’s skin, and he screams in agony, inadvertently entangling himself deeper and deeper into the wire. The housemaid and gardener come running first, screaming, and the gardener tries unsuccessfully to get the little boy out, badly wounding his own hands in the process.
Active
Themes
The husband and wife come running out next, and the house alarm begins to blare, most likely set off yet again by the cat. The little boy’s body, now a “bleeding mass” is “hacked out” of the razor wire with several types of heavy equipment. The man, his wife, the housemaid, and gardener carry “it” into the house.
