In "Once Upon A Time," Nadine Gordimer relates a "bedtime story," which rather than sending the reader to sleep, serves as a warning to families who look for resolutions to problems without really understanding their fears and preoccupations.
The family in the story is living "happily ever after." It has a list of material possessions which should secure a comfortable life but which cannot satisfy the nagging fears which surround this family as the local neighborhood is rapidly changing. At first, the riots and the problems exist outside the neighborhood but as the burglaries increase, even the housemaids are being tied up and this increase in crime alarms the wife. Many people have installed burglar alarms, but they are not even effective as they are often set off by pets or go off randomly and become more of a noisy irritation in the neighborhood than a warning.
More unemployed people begin to loiter on the streets in the neighborhood, looking for work or food, or "anything, baas." It seems they "spoil" the suburb. There are more and more break-ins, even while people are at home, and when the man and his wife go for a walk with their young son and the dog, they can no longer stop to admire the gardens of their neighbors because now they have high walls and security fences.
The neighborhood is becoming more afraid and less trusting, which means families are isolating themselves from the outside world, thinking that this will solve their problems.
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