Critical Analysis Of Nadine Gordimer's Once Upon A Time

Critical Analysis

Stereotypes were prevalent in the Apartheid years in South Africa. In Once Upon a Time, Gordimer shows that stereotypes and preconceived notions of people are rooted from certain expectations. These labels are then passed down from parents to children, and the animosity continues for generations. South Africa was an extreme case in which colored people were even seen as a threat to white people (wikipedia.org). Nadine Gordimer’s work keeps racism alive in the way she puts herself into the shoes of other demographics. She objectively embodies the personas of blacks, whites, males, females, heroes, and villains respectively. She herself experiences the struggles of those who are type casted and then translates the struggle to an audience. Gordimer does this exceptionally well in translating the deeply rooted evil of the Apartheid and its participants in Once Upon A Time.

With her on going determination and phenomenal discipline, Gordimer is able to put herself not only in the thoughts of ones-self, but also in the perspective of male or female, black or white. Gordimer works in the ingenious aspect, always on a mission into the mysteries of human understandings. Nadine Gordimer wrote "Once Upon A Time" to caution her readers about the differences between the fairytale life vs. reality, as well as grabbing the audience’s attention to the threat of stereotyping. This story highlights the need of mortality to stray away from superiority complexes and to not focus on trivial qualities. Society must engage for what we are and not to prove to be better than someone else. How will South Africans ever learn to respect oneself if the living is the way it is? There can be no coinciding of cultures, miscommunication, and u...

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...o be the prince and trying to save the princess by journeying through the terrible thicket of thorns. The story ends as "the bleeding mass of the little boy was hacked out of the security coil with saws, wire-cutters, choppers, and they carried it - the man, the wife, the hysterical trusted housemaid, and the weeping gardener - into the house" ( Gordimer 236). A small detail in this last statement contains a very important fact. Gordimer refers to the little boy as "the bleeding mass" and "it”, he is no longer called "the little boy" or "he (114)”. In some ways, the ending of “Once Upon a Time” is indeterminate because the story gives no exact evidence of the following events of the boy, like if he lives or dies. Although left with a sort of cliff hanger, the artistic unity of the plot leads to a full comprehension of the stories and the relationship between them.