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Jamie Milliff
AP Literature
Ms. S. Kimberlin
20 November 2015
Once Upon a Time Think Piece
Nadine Gordimers childrens story Once Upon a Time is short, seemingly-simple, and yet
complex in its natural duality. Using literary tools like syntax, allusions, and imagery, Gordimer
weaves the beloved fairy tale of Briar Rose into a social commentary on the illusion of safety and
oppression of charity.
The tale begins with a similar structure to the original Grimm telling of Briar Rose, painting
a picture of a small family with dynamic relationships that are unique to each member. The parents
are unintentionally separated from their son through the syntax and sentence structure of the opening
three sentences:
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.
This balanced division is carried throughout the rest of the short story, highlighting the very drastic

differences in worldly perception between the parents and their child. Where the parents see
potential harm, the boy sees fantastic adventures. What the parents consider high security measures,
the boy considers a new obstacle to vanquish in game. Gordimer builds this image first so she might
indirectly question how such a disparity in perception might occur through the rest of the tale.
It could be argued that the parents shelter the little boy too much, they create a world in
which nothing bad can happen to their happily ever after. In the original Briar Rose, the princess is
cursed to prick her finger and die by an ornery evil fairy. Gordimer uses this same witch stereotype
to foreshadow the boys impending doom, but also to introduce a new accusationthat the King and
Queen were the reason for their daughters hundred year sleep. While the boy is given gifts of
impracticality and fantasy, the wise old witch gives her son the means to build a bigger wall, a

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more oppressive suburban fortress. Like the princess in the fairy tale, the boy is sheltered from the
dangers of the world around him, a transgression which he pays for in blood.
The husband and wife, with their little boy and his pets become prisoners in their own
fortified home. The imagery of seeing the trees and sky through bars and the aesthetic prison
architecture of the neighbors homes underlines this enslaving fear. The beautiful rose gardens
were walled away from the eyes on the street out of fear of contamination by the riff-raff that
polluted the beautiful suburb, a duality which contributes to the theme. In Briar Rose, the prince
was able to cut through the briars surrounding the castle because the thorns turned to roses.
Gordimers tale takes the opposite approach, as it is the soft rose blossoms that are replaced by
gleaming barbed wire thorns by the suburban fear.
In Gordimers Once Upon a Time, the classic tale of Briar Rose comes to life in idyllic
suburbia. The King and Queen are just a man and his wife, their only child is a little boy, and the
helpful fairies are the trusted help. All that is missing is the prince, or is he? In a story which
allegorically criticizes the modern worlds obsession with safety, who could be the prince who cuts
through the walls that consider freedom and unrestrained charity to be naivet? Gordimer leaves this
character unwritten as a method of nominating the reader as the storys savior. The innocently
curious princess has blindly pricked her finger and is in need of rescuing. Will you take up the
crusade against a world of fear, to bring compassion and softness to a society which preaches
harness of heart? Will you wake the spirit of adventure and liberty within the sleeping innocent?