muffled xylophone beat. Later, when writing her story about the family who installs a security system and later a security fence in their house, she writes, "the alarms called to one another across the gardens in shrills and bleats and wails." In this example of personification, the sirens that go off in houses call to each other with wails, almost as if they are ghosts or crazed animals.

The frame narrative is the opening literary device that Gordimer uses in the story.  In true postmodern fashion, she creates a story of which she is a part.  Her defiance at the "need" to write a children's story coupled with her own paranoia at what creaks below is what causes the story to form.  Both of these elements are thematically germane to what we end up reading in the story.  In terms of the story itself, the thematic repetition of the family's happiness and how they were content with one another is an excellent juxtaposition to the unknown nature of the world, and the collision of both settings end up creating the horrific set of circumstances for the ending.  Gordimer is really adroit at being able to use thematic and character development as a way to build the plot.  Finally, the allegorical nature of the story is compelling in how it reflects the desire for perfection revealing a tale of destruction underneath.  The symbolism of being so insistent on creating a world where one appropriates it in accordance to their own subjectivity without integrating the presence of the dialectical "other" in the process is something that Gordimer is quite deliberate in creating.

One stylistic device is the use of the frame story. Gordimer doesn't just launch into her tale but first tells us she has been asked to write a children's story, then describes how creaks in the night keep her awake. She starts to think of a woman murdered nearby and a man nearby who was recently killed by a servant he had let go who first strangled the man's guard dogs. These thoughts lead Gordimer to tell herself "a bedtime" story.

The frame functions as a complex device. First, children's stories sometimes use framing devices. For example, we might think of the Lemony Snicket books, which try to humorously warn children away from reading them. Gordimer's opening also relates to children's stories in that we traditionally connect such stories to "bed time" and to things that "creak" or go bump in the night. And while Gordimer's frame story foreshadows the tale to come, it initially builds suspense as well: will Gordimer tell a scary story or a comforting story to alleviate her fears?

A second stylistic device is the use of generic terms, such as man, wife, little boy, cat, and dog, rather than giving the characters specific names, such as Zippy the cat. The story also takes place in a timeless zone: we are told of generic "riots" but not which riots. This technique of timelessness and not naming universalizes the story, much as a fairy tale does. "Little Red Riding Hood," for example, takes place in an unspecified woods, features a "grandmother" and nameless girl only identified by her clothing, and it is not associated with any particular historical period, just the past.

Gordimer uses the above-noted devices to reinforce her theme, which is imbedded in both the frame and inner stories: that guard dogs, high walls, barbed wires, guards with guns, and other ways of "fortressing" ourselves don't keep us safe, neither in the specific world of history from which the frame story is told nor in the ahistorical world she creates in her children's story.

One stylistic deviceNadine Gordimer employs to make her short story "Once Upon a Time" sound  like a children's story is syntax. Her syntax especially creates an element of suspense and mystery, just like you might read in a children's fantasy story. Specifically, after the opening sentences, she begins to use a series of very short sentences, and both the syntax and the diction serve to create suspense. One example, can be seen in the sentence, "A voice in the echo chamber of the subconscious?," and again in, "A sound." We further see the short syntax in, "I listened," and, "Again: the creaking." Combined with the diction choices of "voice," "echo," "sound," and "creaking," we see that these short sentences add the sense of mystery, giving the reader the impression that the author is being invaded by something, possibly supernatural, like an elf or goblin.

A second stylistic device Gordimer employs to make her story read similarly to a children's story is allegory. An allegory is any writing in a piece of literature that can be interpreted beyond its literal meaning. Usually, characters, events, and even objects are used symbolically to portray a deeper, underlying meaning. Many children's works are written allegorically with the purpose of teaching a deeper moral. In "Once Upon a Time," the Gordimer tells herself a "bedtime story" that starts out with the picture perfect family in the picture perfect house, just like a fairytale, but ends very tragically with the son's death becoming a consequence of the family's prejudices and obsessions. In itself, the bedtime story tells a moral about the wrongness of prejudices and obsessions; however, if we couple Gordimer's bedtime story with her refusal to write a children's story in the beginning of her short story, we get an idea of exactly why the author felt disinclined to write a children's story, what she has against them. Clearly, she sees the fairytale with the fairytale beginning and the fairytale ending as being contrary to true life. Hence, she tells herself a bedtime story that contradicts a typical fairytale in that it starts out happy but ends tragically. It can be said that she is using her whole short story to protest against the typical content of children's stories to point out that they are commonly unrealistic and noneducational. Therefore, her entire short story is an allegory to protest against children's stories.

Gordimer doesn't really get to these devices or her "children's story" until she begins to relate the bedtime story. She begins this story in a very general way, and this serves to suggest that this story is about "any" family in any place or time. It is therefore very accessible to many families:

In a house, in a suburb, in a city, there was a man and his wife who loved each other very much and were living happily ever after. They had a little boy and they loved him very much. They had a cat and a dog that the little boy loved very much. 

Note the simplicity. This is a simple description of a loving family living "happily ever after." This phrase clearly echoes the most famous final line of many fairy tales. The most famous opening line, "once upon a time," only occurs as the story's title. Still, this opening paragraph about the family almost conjures that phrase in the reader's mind. There are typical fairy tale phrases and a simplistic style, both of which are designed for younger reading audiences.

The phrase "happily ever after" is repeated in this story. The family continually tries to live happily ever after. As they increasingly try to transform their house into a fortress, they believe the security the fortress provides will enable them to live happily ever after. The story does end with some gruesome, tragic irony. This seems contrary to what a children's story should be. There are classic fairy tales with gruesome events, even though many of these end with "happily ever after."

Gordimer is doing a lot more than presenting a children's story. She is indirectly addressing social tension in South Africa through this story and the country's uncertain future. She and other South Africans surely wondered about their future as the country struggled to end apartheid. They must have wondered if and when they would or could live happily ever after.

In "Once upon a Time," Nadine Gordimer uses allusions to the bedtime story as a stylistic device that evokes the emotional background present in many children's stories. The frame story begins with the narrator having been asked to write a children's story and refusing. She then tells herself "a bedtime story" to help herself fall asleep. 

Elements of bedtime stories that Gordimer weaves into the tale she tells include the witch, the dragon's teeth, and the phrase "happily ever after." In the story the narrator tells, the "living happily ever after" comes first rather than at the end. This may put the reader on alert right away. We know that once the characters are living happily ever after, there are no more troubles and nothing more to tell about them. If a story begins with them living happily ever after, we suspect that state will not endure.

When the dragon appears near the end of the story—actually a fence topper designed by "DRAGON'S TEETH"—it is actually willingly brought to the family's home despite the woman's misgivings about it. She shudders at the sight of it at a neighboring home, and she "hope[s] the cat will take heed." Knowing the treachery of dragons in most bedtime stories, readers feel dread. In the final paragraph, Gordimer overtly alludes to a specific bedtime story, "Sleeping Beauty," as the little boy attempts to play-act the hero and is destroyed by the Dragon's Teeth.

By choosing the stylistic device of the bedtime story but turning it on its head, Gordimer gives readers much to think about that will shake them out of the complacency of thinking they can live happily ever after in a world where they ignore the suffering of others.