Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time by Nadine Gordimer was a fascinating twist on fairy tales and childrens books. A man, his wife and their son. They all loved eachother very much. Nadine starts with the obvious dislike of writing a childrens book or a fairy tale, but tricks herself into it when she is paraniod into believing someone is walking through her house, when in fact, I am lead to believe she may jsut have some old floor boards.
This is not the story I would have told myself.
The man, his wife, or his possession, and their son. They loved eachother very much, they loved their cat and their dog, they loved their house and their neighborhood very very much. They had a gardener and a housemaid, they probably shared in on some of the love as well. THe story started off "happily ever after." So obviously ending in a horribly twisted version of a happily ever after story. There were references to different fairy tales, the biggest one I noticed being the "old witch." She warned her family to not let in any outsiders, that they would do much harm. The family did everything they could to protect their lovely home, soon turning it into a prision, not something to be admired and thoguht beautiful, but a gated house, with a horrible barbed wire fence. The one thing that had meant to keep them safe, ended up destroying them in the end. They let in the outsider, being the fence, and the little boy, who they loved very much, crawled through to his fate.
Every fairy tale has a moral. I believe that this one deals with paranoia, and how the most innocent, the one who lives life simplisticly, gets harmed in the end.