Once Upon a Time (Theme)

"...the alarm set up wailing against the screams while the beleeding mass of the little boy was hacked out of the security coil with saws, wire-cutters, choppers, and they carried it- the man, the wife, the hysterical trusted housemaid and the weeping gardener- into the house." -page 236

This not-so-typical children's bed time story is filled with irony. All of the security precautions put into the house were what eventually killed their son. The parents were so paranoid of danger and robbery that they took it to another level. They would add some new type of security, even when nothing happened or no threat was posed. Another irony was that the alarm went off so easily and so often that it just became disregarded. The reader thinks that the parents paranoia comes from their protection of their child, but at one point they let him walk ahead of them all by himself. The parents had these internal subconscious type feelings that something was going to go wrong. They caused themselves to be paranoid, not society. A theme of this story would be that a person cannot constantly live in fear.