Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time by Nadine Gordimer, follows a quite interesting story. A man is a awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of his house settling. When he tries to go back to bed he tries to get himself to fall back to sleep by telling himself a bedtime story. He tells a story of a world full of robbers, and of a competing neighborhood to get the latest and greatest security. One family even puts a constantine wire, to keep the intruders out. The story seemed rather odd while I was reading it. I wondered where the story was headed, and what the point of it was. The people had a seemingly innocent goal, to protect their property and livelihood. The outcome from these was not ideal. Rather than ending in the hopeful security, destruction is the outcome. Gordimer writes "...The shining coiled tunnel was just wide enough for his little body to creep in, and with the first fixing of its razor teeth to his knees and hands and head he screamed and struggled deeper into its tangle" (Gordimer, 236). The son ends up being mutilated in the wire that was meant to protect him. Even the truest goals can have the worst consequences.