Iron-y it Out

For a story titled, "Once Upon a Time" you wouldn't expect it to be gruesome, or even contain a death at the end?

Well, if you said yes, brush up on your literary terms, especially "irony".

Irony in the simplest terms is the contradiction or opposite situation of what is expected to happen to a person, circumstance, or statement. 

This shows irony because it is expected that the improved literacy department can spell, however, apparently not.

There are three types of irony verbal, dramatic, and situational. You can laugh about the three types of irony here.  In Gordimer's work mainly situational irony is used, and a couple of instances of verbal irony too. 

The verbal irony, saying one thing but in truth meaning another, in Gordimer's work is when she says that the characters "were living happily ever after". The author is really telling the readers that the family is not actually living in harmony but rather in the wretched state of never being satisfied.

The situational irony, the exact opposite of what is expected happens, occurs many times in the story. It usually comes in the format of the couple buying a piece of safety equipment to keep them safe but it hurts and hinders them in the result.

One situation is when the whole community buys alarm systems to keep out the burglars. The alarms keep going off because of the wandering cats(oh, you darn cats!) and becomes a sound that the whole community is used to. Gordimer tells the reader that, "under cover of the electronic harpies’ discourse intruders....broke into homes". The expected result of having alarms is that the home would not have been broken into, but using irony, Gordimer plays with our expectations and makes the alarms harm the families.

Another situation is when the ***spoiler alert*** boy dies from the installation of barbed wire on their fence to, ironically, keep the boy safe.

Irony is a fantastic way to produce a sarcastic tone in a literary work. Instead of just telling the reader that people need to know when to stop and be satisfied about safety and that there needs to be a balance between the two extremes and sometimes being unsafe is okay, the author sarcastically describes a horrendous child's story through ironic situations.

In many ways, it is easier and more entertaining to describe things ironically. That is probably why Gordimer decided to write "Once Upon a Time" through irony.