This presentation is one of my academic activities at Department of English at M. K. Bhavnagar University

1. Name : Vora Kiran Shamaldas
Class : M.A Sem. 4
Roll no : 12
Paper no. 14 : The African Literature
Topic :
Batch : 2016-18
Email Id : kiranvora5196@gmail.com
Submitted to : Smt. S.B. Gardi
Department of English,
M. K. Bhavnagar University.

3. Gabriel Okara
• Gabriel Okara is a
Nigerian Writer
• Novelist and poet
• Born : April 1921, Nigeria
• He is highly original and
uninfluenced by other
poets
• His poems have great
sensitivity, perspective
judgments and a
tremendous energy
• The first Modernist
poet of Anglophone
Africa

4. Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time, son,
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.
There was a time indeed
they used to shake hands with their hearts:
but that’s gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.
Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’:
they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice-
for then I find doors shut on me.
So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.
And I have learned too
to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’,
when I mean ‘Good-riddance’:
to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been
nice talking to you’, after being bored.
But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare
fangs!
So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

5. • Gabriel Okara’s Once Upon A Time is a comment on
society through a monologue from a father to a son which
bemoans the loss of innocence in the transition from
child to adult and a desire to revert back to that blissful
childhood.
• The father addresses his son telling him how he
remembers that once people used to be open and
expressive with their emotions with laughter that
reached their eyes, but now they are aloof and distant
with fake smiles.
• people form friendships and relationships for personal
benefits only, leading to a cold world without any depth
of feeling.
• The hospitability has vanished as people only say the
expected welcoming phrases without meaning them and
shy away from allowing anyone from getting too close,
distancing themselves whenever someone threatens to
break down the walls they have hidden themselves
behind.
Summery

6. Nostalgia
• The Poem is on this concept
• “When you’re nostalgic about something, there’s a little bit
of a sense of loss—[the moment has] happened, it’s gone—
but usually the net result is happiness,” says Clay
Routledge, a social psychologist at North Dakota State
University, who, with several other researchers, has
studied the emotion extensively over the past decade.
• The team has found that nostalgic memories typically
entail cherished, personal moments, such as those spent
with loved ones. Those memories, in turn, inspire positive
feelings of joy, high self-regard, belonging, and
meaningfulness in life.
• The speaker in the poem or we can say the Poet feels
nostalgic
• He is craving for past days
• Wants to go back to those days

7. • The poem is about the change that happened in
people’s behavior and life style
• People that used to be honest, now they are
deceitful
• The poets shows his wish to be the way he used to
be
• Adults should learn from Children
• Adulthood changes you, and you quickly adapt the
changes
• The parenthood can change your view of the world
• The poem informs about the society and real truth,
the hard realities of being an adult rather than
innocence when a child
• The poem displays the pain of growing up, and the
loss of innocence

8. Form and Structure
• The structure of the poem makes it seem
like he is actually talking to his child
• The poem is Unpoetic – seems natural and
conversational
• Like the readers are the ‘son’ he addresses
• The style of the writing makes the message
of the poem clear and simple
• Written in free verses
• Irregular stanzas and lack of rhyme could
mimic the speaker’s distress and struggle
• His mind is incoherent as a result of the
corruption surrounding him

9. The Title
• “Once Upon a Time” the title itself suggests
that the poem is a talk about past
• This connects the idea of fairy tale: the
audience is immediately captured by the
familiarity of the universal phrase and
curiosity regarding how the speaker involves
this idea in his poem
• The speaker conveys his intention of
‘unlearnig’ what he has learnt, which is quite
impossible

10. Themes
• Change – how people change over
the years and become false and
untrustworthy
• Influence – the influence of the
white western on African nations;
countries like Nigeria were honest
before being developed by the west
• Dishonest / Hiding true intentions
• Innocence / Childhood

11. Bibliography
• npaliterature. Once upon a time. 1 March
2015. 26 march 2018
https://www.slideshare.net/npaliterature/onc
e-upon-a-time-45293021
• This presentation is really useful and easy to
understand, I have read this and then took
some points in my Presentation