Colonization created situations that forced different cultures to come into contact with one another to live with each other that may not understand one another. Two literary stories that talk about this issue are “No Witchcraft for Sale” by Doris Lessing and “Once Upon a Time” by Gordimer. Both of the stories revolve around fear, their culture, and the way they live their lives because there are people that will try anything they can to protect culture or belief system so they may do things to protect ourselves or our culture. In “No Witchcraft for Sale” the situation is that the servant in the story saves his master from going blind, and the master-servant relationship gets turned around. In “Once Upon a Time” there is a white family living in a type of suburb where rich white people are getting their valuables stolen or worse killed.
In “No Witchcraft for Sale” an African American servant feared that his master’s parents may make him give up what he has learned in the field of medicine, just so they can make money. Since he helped out the little boy, the boy’s parents start giving the servant gifts. The parents get visit from a scientist and tells them that it is a miracle the boy is not blind and that whatever the servant used could be sold to make a profit. When the servant is told about this he felt betrayed by the boy’s parents. The parents told the servant to take them to the miracle plant and to give it to them. The servant stays in his place for a couple of seconds thinking what to do. Since he does not want to give up his culture of being taught what he was taught he did not take the boy’s parents to the plant but to a fake one. In this story is shows that there are people that would give up their culture for money and that other people will not give it up even if it costs them their lives.
In “Once Upon a Time,” is a white family living in a suburb. As the days keep going other rich white families are getting their valuables stolen or they are getting killed by poor African Americans. The story takes place in rich neighborhood where the families have servants. When the main white family hears about this they try everything to try and prevent this from happening to them. The first thing they do to protect themselves is they install a fence to the backyard. Next they build a taller wall. After that they put razors all around the walls surrounding the house. As soon as that happened the family was safe. The boy gets a children’s book from his grandmother when he reads it he fells like helping out a princess he climbs up the wall, gets caught on the razors, and finally is dead. The place where this horrific event happened was on top of the tall wall after they made it deadly. The irony in this story is that an African servant suggests the idea for razors around the house.
In conclusion the two authors show us that because of our culture or belief system we may do things to protect ourselves or our culture. The examples again were in “No Witchcraft for Sale” when the servant helped out his master from becoming blind, and the boys parents wanted to sell the plant and the servant felt betrayed. The second example was in “Once Upon a Time” a white family wanted to protect themselves from the Africans that were stealing and killing the rich white families. This is also true for us because we try everything to protect ourselves and our culture, we may even to as far as to doing things that may seem extreme to other people, like install some crazy security system to the house, or even have about eight guard dogs around the house.