Once Upon a Time

The unnamed narrator is the protagonist. She is a novelist who has been asked to write a children’s story for an anthology. Gordimer does not provide physical details describing the narrator, except to imply that she is white. Her personality is defiant. When her contact tells her that every novelist should write at least one children's story, she thinks about sending a postcard back saying she does not think she “ought” to write anything (67).

The narrator’s attitude mirrors that of the family in her bedtime story. When she fears an intruder has entered her house, like the family, she thinks about similar crimes that have happened in her area. The family, too, fears an imaginary threat while ignoring the true causes for alarm in their social context. Unlike the family, the narrator has no security systems to protect her. Ironically, the unstable mines under the house—her symbolic reference to the shaky foundations on which apartheid rests—pose a far greater danger than any intruder. This idea misses the narrator, however, as she relaxes and tries to fall back asleep after realizing there is no intruder in the house.