Once Upon a Time

"Next day he pretended to be the Prince who braves the terrible thicket of thorns to enter the palace and kiss the Sleeping Beauty back to life: he dragged a ladder to the wall, the shining coiled tunnel was just wide enough for his little body to creep in, and with the first fixing of its razor teeth in his knees and hands and head he creamed and struggled deeper into its tangle." p. 236

The main thing I noticed about this short story was the irony. The whole time the husband and wife are looking for ways to keep people out. They are hearing of all of these horrible occurrences that are supposedly happening to their neighbors and they presume that they, obviously, are next. They put up a sign that says YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and think that if that sign is merely removed, then their house if free to the general public. So this whole time they are worried about people getting in, when they really should have been worried about people getting out. Their only son - who they fought so hard to protect - wants to get out of the property because he reads a fairy tale book and wants to save the girl. In his story, it says that he must get out of the trap. Well, that nice, new fence the husband and wife just put in looks perfectly like a trap a villian would set up. So he goes inside it and is essentially ripped to threads. It is ironic that they spent time protecting their loved ones against what was outside, but the thing protecting them is what brought their downfall.