“Once Upon a Time” by Nadine Gordimer: A Fairy Tale for Peace

Abstract

Critically acclaimed as one of the most significant and dramatic anti-apartheid testimonies, “Once Upon a Time” by Gordimer is also an astute rhetorical construction. By placing the contentious theme of infanticide at the centre of the narration, and with a touch that is unexpectedly both light and ironic, the author creates a fairy tale that, while meeting the requirements of the genre, also manages to distance itself from this through weight of grief. It is classical tragedy – as the promulgater of a bitter model of peace – that dictates both the form and the content of this brief story, which perfectly mirrors the three Aristotelian unities, with its classical structure and principal arguments drawing on the repertoire of Greek mythology.