"Once Upon a Time" ~by Nadine Gordimer

(#6)
The final paragraph is the main conflict in the story. Throughout the story, various events had been leading up to this final ending. The irony of the story is clearly shown in the last paragraph. The whole story is written like a fairytale; the phrases "Once upon a time" and "living happily ever after" are repeated throughout. The final paragraph begins as the mother is reading a fairy story to the little boy before he goes to sleep. The tragic ending happens when the little boy is pretending to be the prince and trying to save the princess by journeying through the terrible thicket of thorns. The tragic irony can be found in the boy's death. 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" (page 236). A small detail in this last statement contains a very important fact. The little boy is referred to as "the bleeding mass" and "it." He is no longer called "the little boy" or "he." I interpreted this to mean that the little boy is dead. The family tried so hard to protect and to defend their "happily ever after" family that they ended up killing the thing they were trying to keep safe. This shows the theme of the story; the family tried too hard to achieve peace and happiness in their lives that they became paranoid and ultimately destroyed that which they valued most in their lives.