52 pages 1 hour read

Nadine Gordimer

Once Upon a Time

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1989

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Exam Questions

Multiple Choice and Long Answer questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, unit exam, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. Why does the narrator refer to the fencing as “pure concentration-camp style”?

A) The wall was built by Germans.

B) It represents a larger racist ideology.

C) It is designed to keep people in.

D) People inside are actively murdered.

2. What kind of figurative language does the narrator use in “The misbeats of my heart tailed off like the last muffled flourishes on one of the wooden xylophones”?

A) Metaphor

B) Personification

C) Alliteration

D) Simile

3. Who is the “wise old witch”?

A) A random neighbor

B) The wife’s mother

C) The husband’s mother

D) A local preacher

4. Who finds the boy in the wire and attempts to save him?

A) The nervous mother

B) The itinerant gardener

C) The loving father

D) The doting grandmother

5. Which of the following quotes best supports the theme of South Africa’s Mining Industry, Exploitation, and Personal Wealth?

A) “He loved her very much and buses were being burned, cars stoned, and schoolchildren shot by the police.” (Paragraph 9)

B) “Insurance companies paid no compensation for single malt, a loss made keener by the property owner’s knowledge that the thieves wouldn’t even have been able to appreciate what it was they were drinking.” (Paragraph 11)