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Against personal anxiety, the narrative expands into social and political realities shaped by apartheid-era South Africa, including censorship, violence, and the ways communities manage safety. To counter dread, the narrator constructs a bedtime fantasy where security measures and warnings frame an idealized household.",{"@graph":69,"@context":114},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":10,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/story-novel/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/once-upon-a-time-short-story-read-online/436369/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/once-upon-a-time-short-story-read-online/436369.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Blitz","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-03","2026-09-29",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":52},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How do the parents in the bedtime story attempt to protect their family?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"They create layered safeguards—fenced play areas, trustworthy household help, an itinerant gardener, insurance, and participation in Neighborhood Watch—while posting warnings at their gates.","Answer","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":116,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":118,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":120,"site_id":62},436369,1790879369,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":123},{"doc_id":120,"user_id":124,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":125,"doc_module":4,"category_id":8,"category_name":10,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":126,"file_id":127,"file_url":128,"file_type":129,"file_size":130,"view_count":52,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":34,"language":131,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":132,"faqs":133,"seo_title":134,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":135,"read_time":136},24464137899374,"https://us-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_3d24733baf745e90a7e4bdd5f77d97b2","Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923 ) was born in South Africa. Her family was privileged and white in a country that practiced apartheid—an official policy of segregation of nonwhite South Africans enforced by the government. Nadine Gordimer became politically opposed to the policy. Her early works, such as The Soft Voice of the Serpent and The Lying Days, explore themes of exile and the effects of apartheid on internal life in South Africa. Before apartheid ended in 1994, some of Gordimer’s writings were banned by the South African government; however, these texts were appreciated in other parts of the world. She has been awarded many literary prizes, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.  \nOnce Upon a Time  \nShort Story by Nadine Gordimer  \n10  \nAS YOU READ Pay attention to the relationship of the characters to the community in which they live. What steps do the parents take to ensure their family’s safety?  \nSomeonstoriesefhasor cwhilridttenrentIo asreplkymethatt cdonont’ibutewritetochnldantren’hology os stories;f  \nand he writes back that at a recent congress/book fair/seminar a certain novelist said every writer ought to write at least one story for children. I think of sending a postcard saying I don’t accept that I “ought” to write anything.  \nAnd then last night I woke up—or rather was wakened without knowing what had roused me.  \nA voice in the echo chamber of the subconscious?  \nA sound.  \nA creaking of the kind made by the weight carried by one foot after another along a wooden floor. I listened. I felt the apertures of my ears distend with concentration. Again: the creaking. I was waiting for it; waiting to hear if it indicated that feet were moving from room to room, coming up the passage—to my door. I have no burglar bars, no gun under the pillow, but I have the same fears as people who do take these precautions, and my windowpanes  \ndistend  \n(d∆-st≈nd´) v.  \nto bulge or expand.  \nImage Credits: (tr) ©Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images; (c) ©Simon Potter/Cultura/Getty Images  \nare thin as rime, 1 could shatter like a wineglass. A woman was murdered (how do they put it) in broad daylight in a house two  \n20 blocks away, last year, and the fierce dogs who guarded an old widower and his collection of antique clocks were strangled before he was knifed by a casual laborer he had dismissed without pay.  \nI was staring at the door, making it out in my mind rather than seeing it, in the dark. I lay quite still—a victim already—but the arrhythmia2 of my heart was fleeing, knocking this way and that against its body-cage. How finely tuned the senses are, just out of rest, sleep! I could never listen intently as that in the distractions of the day; I was reading every faintest sound, identifying and classifying its possible threat.  \n30 But I learned that I was to be neither threatened nor spared. There was no human weight pressing on the boards, the creaking was a buckling, an epicenter3 of stress. I was in it. The house that surrounds me while I sleep is built on undermined ground; far beneath my bed, the floor, the house’s foundations, the stopes4 and passages of gold mines have hollowed the rock, and when some face trembles, detaches, and falls, three thousand feet below, the whole house shifts slightly, bringing uneasy strain to the balance and counterbalance of brick, cement, wood, and glass that hold it as a structure around me. The misbeats of my heart tailed off like the  \n40 last muffled flourishes on one of the wooden xylophones made by the Chopi and Tsonga5 migrant miners who might have been down there, under me in the earth at that moment. The stope where the fall was could have been disused, dripping water from its ruptured veins; or men might now be interred there in the most profound of tombs.  \nI couldn’t find a position in which my mind would let go of my body—release me to sleep again. So I began to tell myself a story; a bedtime story.  \nIn a house, in a suburb, in a city, there were a man and his wife 50 ","cbCairctWybpMSeK","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCairctWybpMSeK","pdf",6004594,"English","# AS YOU READ\n## Relationship of characters to community\n## Steps parents take to ensure family safety","[{\"question\":\"How do the parents in the bedtime story attempt to protect their family?\",\"answer\":\"They create layered safeguards—fenced play areas, trustworthy household help, an itinerant gardener, insurance, and participation in Neighborhood Watch—while posting warnings at their gates.\"}]","Once Upon a Time - Short Story - read online | PDF",1790677789,11]