Once Upon a Time

"Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordiner

"Next day he pretended to be the Prince who braves terrible thicket of thorns to enter the palace and kiss the Sleeping Beauty back to life: he dragged a ladder to the wall, the shining colied tunnel was just wide enough for his little body to creep in, and with the first fixing of its razorteeth in his knees and hands and head he screamed and struggled deeper into its tangle" (Gordiner, page 236).

Shifts of emotion and atmosphere occur throughout the parts of this short story. The first emotion came in the first paragraph of the story. The emotion of a predisposed superiority came through from the narrator's diction. Following the first paragraph, the snippet before the beginning of the story of the family created an emotion with suspense. The atmosphere left me feeling that it was a nightmare of the narrator. Furthermore, as the story progressed into the story of the family, atmosphere changes began to come about more severely. The first atmosphere of the nearly perfect family in a perfect society placed a happy, perfect atmopshere. When the mention of the people trying to get in and the son finding interest in the gate speaker, I began to notice a shift of the atmosphere of an erie, futurisitc atmosphere marked by the separation of the classes that reminds me of many different sci-fi movies. As the families became more and more protected, the atmosphere became more and more dark until the boy decides to attempt to be brave and escape. The overall atmosphere of the story was that of perfection not being perfect and the flaws put in by attempts to be perfect.