Sad!!

The short story Once Upon a Time presents an irony that was just very sad. Throughout the story, the parents are afraid of their house being broken into. They make all this security systems and then even put an eccentric bobwire fence that make it impossibe to climb over or get through. If anyone attempted to get through it, they would pretty much die. And this is what happened to the son the couple dearly loved. He was innocently playing a game with himself in which he tried to get through the fence but killed himself. So the security that they put up to protect themselves is what ended up killing their son. Complete irony!! This irony is also what helps contribute to the theme of the novel. I believe the theme of this novel to be that what we do to try to protect ourselves can actually come back to hurt us if we take that protection to the extreme. This theme is irony in itself, so having the situational irony in the story only adds to the effects of the the theme.