"Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer

     In the short story, "Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer, syntax and diction are used to create a fairy tale atmosphere.  Gordimer tells the tale like a story.  Here she uses the fairy tale like details to tell the story.  "In a house, in a suburb, in a city, there were a man and his wife who loved each other very much and were living happily ever after," (Gordimer, 233).  She uses a child-like tone to tell the story.  Gordimer writes short, broken up sentences to emphasize the "fairy taleness" of her bed-time story.  The syntax also helps to build up the story to the climax and to lead the reader to believe that something bad was going to happen.  As they built more security measures for their home, the story became more like a fairy tale.  This finally lead to the story not sounding like a fairy tale anymore when the kid got caught in the barbed-wire.