Family Unit 2

"Once Upon A Time"
Nadine Gordimer

Gordimer's piece, Once Upon A Time, has a great deal of irony within the story. Throghout the entire story, the parents are trying to create a safe, protected environment for their son. Ironically, the seemingly safe environment that they have created ultimately leads to the death of their son. The family installs an extremely sensitive alarm system to prevent robbers from breaking into their house. One day the boy tries to scale the side of the house where the wire coils are located. As the parents see this taking place, they burst out to try to save him, but the cat sets off the alaram which causes "...the bleeding mass of the little boy..."(Gordimer, 236) to be hacked out of the security coil with saws and other harmful tools. The fact that the family installed this alarm system for protection is ironic because the boy ended up being directly harmed by the overprotectiveness of the house. I definitely learned a lesson from the irony of the story. Often times in life, we can try to do everything to protect ourselves from certain things happening to us; however, unknown elements will always intervene. There will always be some sort of unforeseeable cause that will make things troublesome for us. This family seemed to have the perfect, protected life. They would have thought that their abundant amount of security would not allow for any tragedy to take place.