Imagery and Structure in Nadine Gordimer's "Once Upon a Time"

Summary In Nadine Gordimer's story "Once upon a Time" published originally in 1989, the white child caught in the barbed wire and then violently ripped free symbolises not only the death of white supremacy but also the birth of a new South African society. The multiple ironies of imagery and structure brilliantly clarify Gordimer's inverted fairy tale of a Yeatsian "terrible beauty".