Once Upon a Time (Gordimer)
Storyboard-Text
- Fairy Tale Begins
- Setting: The suburbs, with riots occuring outside the city
- YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
- Character Motivations: Why are the wife and husband taking extreme security measures?
- The narrator, unable to sleep due to being afraid of outside threats, tell themselves a bedtime story ..., In a house, in a suburb, in a city, there were 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 that the little boy loved very much (pg.68).
- Context: In what time period and location, does this story take place?
- They had a housemaid who was absolutely trustworthy and an itinerant gardener who was highly recommended by the neighbours. For when they began to live happily ever after they were warned, by that wise old witch, the husband's mother, not to take on anyone off the street(pg. 68).
- Personal Reflection: How do you feel about the family's extreme security measures in the story? Do you think the were necessary? Why or why not?
- The riots were suppressed, but there were many burglaries in the suburb and somebody's trusted housemaid was tied up and shut in a cupboard by thieves while she was in charge of her employers' house. The trusted housemaid of the man and wife and little boy was so upset by this misfortune befalling a friend left as she herself often was with responsibility for the possessions of the man and his wife and the little boy, that she implored her employers to have burglar bars attached to the doors and windows of the house, and an alarm system installed. The wife said, She is right, let us take heed of her advice(pg. 70).
- Theme: Why do you think the author decided to tell this particular story? What message is she trying to convey?
- Then the time came when many pf the people who were not trusted housemaids and gardeners hung out about the suburb because they were unemployed. Some importuned for a job The wise witch encouraged that the family build a taller wall so that burglars can't climb. ...once locked and the alarm set, someone might still be able to climb over the wall or electronically closed gates into the garden... then the wall should be higher (Gordimer). So the wise old witch paid for the extra bricks as her Christmas present for her son and the little boy got a book of fairytales (pg.71).
- But every week there were more reports of intrusion: in broad daylight and the dead of night, in the early hours of the morning, and even in the lovely summer twilight .. 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.. the parents thought of a way to keep out the burglars from climbing the wall. The best decision for them is to put barbed wire fence. There would be no way out, only a struggle getting bloodier and bloodier, a deeper and sharper hooking of flesh... anyone would think twice (Gordimer, pg.71-72). This idea would guarantee that no one would trespass over in their home.
- One evening, the mother read the little boy to sleep witha fairy story from the book the wise old witch had given him at Christmas. Next day he pretended to be the Prince who braves the terrible thicket of thorns to enter the palace and kiss the Sleeping Beauty back to life: the little boy climbed the wall and got caught in the coils of the barbed fence, causing his death. Then the man and his wife burst wildly into the garden and for some reason (the cat, probably) the alarm set up wailing against the screams while the bleeding mass of the little boy was hacked out of the security coils... (pg.72).
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