Nadine Gordimer weaves many examples of foreshadowing into "Once Upon a Time." The frame story introduces the concept of fear.
As the bedtime story begins, readers learn the family is "living happily ever after." Since such wording usually describes the end, not the beginning, of a story, readers know the happiness cannot last, or there would not be any story at all. The reference to the parents' fencing the swimming pool so the boy won't "fall in and drown" foreshadows the boy's death in his own yard. The early appearance of a "wise old witch" also portends some sort of evil curse or ill fortune. When the second paragraph of the bedtime story explains "it was not possible to insure the house. . . against riot damage," readers suspect such an event may occur. This foreshadowed event never happens; instead, it is the desire to "insure against. . . damage" that becomes the destructive force in the family's life.
The cat that keeps setting off the alarm acts as a bad omen as well. Cats and witches often portend evil, and in this case, the fact that the cat can scale the wall and get through the bars predicts that the home is not yet fully secure. The installation of the "Dragon's Teeth" fencing that makes their home look like a concentration camp, and the wife's first contradiction ("You're wrong") give a feeling of foreboding as the end of the story nears. Now the cat sleeps on the bed, yet the husband's calm assurance that "cats always look before they leap" makes readers anticipate that the cat is wiser than his human owners, and that they are leaping into danger that they haven't fully considered.
The foreshadowing Gordimer uses helps readers stay engaged with the story as they anticipate a non-traditional ending to this "bedtime story."
Nadine Gordimer's inverted fairy tale "Once Upon a Time," is about a racist couple who are so afraid of other people that they isolate themselves from the rest of society until it ultimately leads to a terrible loss. There is a foreshadowing that something will happen at the end of the story. The first example of foreshadowing is the inverted fairy tale format. This story is an inverted fairly because instead of starting when life is bad and ending with, "they lived happily ever after," this story starts with a "happy" life and ends with a terrible loss. The introduction of the story introduces that the couple lives happily. This immediately foreshadows that a cloud is going to pass over this happiness and a terrible event is going to happen at the end. Another example of foreshadowing is when the author describes the couple's neighborhood watch sign. The reads, "YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED" over the silhouette of an intruder. Literally, these are words on the watch sign to discourage intrusion, but they also foreshadow that the couple has been warned of impending doom due to their almost obsession with isolation. In the context of South Africa, which the house represents, this means that the system of apartheid will come apart sooner or later since fear and the discrimination against people based on it never goes anywhere good.
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