LIVING IN FEAR

In this modern era, safety and peace of mind are evermore becoming considerable concerns as the crimes rate and cases have increased in numbers. Robberies, murders, suicides, bullies have been “served” along with our breakfasts every morning. Every where we go, we tend to feel insecure although we live in a country that can be categorized as peaceful and harmony.

In Nadine Gordimer’s “Once Upon a Time”, it asks our culture to reevaluate our trust of the world we live in and also the people who inhabit it. Like the husband and wife in the story, even though they live in a high-tech society, they feel over worry about the family safety until they indoctrinate themselves to be prejudice towards their surroundings and the other people from other community. Their worriedness has somehow led them to take precautions as to protect and defend their family from the chaos and other threats that may be initiated by the other people not from their neighborhood area. They gradually built high wall around the house, fit an electronically-controlled gate, put bars at all doors and windows in their house and lastly, to have a sharp, steel “flesh-eater” dragon-teeth gate to be fitted all around the house.

This is an obsessive fear in which they have separated themselves from the lives they once cherished; every precaution they take disconnects them from the world they live in. unfortunately, it is ironic that at the end of the story, their prejudice towards the world ultimately bring about the horrible death of what they love most, their only son, who, while acting out the role of the prince rescuing the princess in the fairytale, “Sleeping Beauty,” becomes entangled in the coiled tunnel of the dragon-teeth. Their fear and xenophobia that make them take precaution to secure their safety and possessions have inadvertently executed their own son.

“Once Upon a Time” tells us that we cannot ever find that perfect safety place. It is not to say that we do not have to care about our safety but we have to not to be apprehensive about what will happen to us until it deters us to enjoy and to get on with our lives.