“There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood is about two speakers, one who is attempting to tell the story of Cinderella, and the other who I constantly objecting to what’s mentioned in the story. At first, I was a bit annoyed by the second speaker, because they wouldn’t let the storyteller just tell a story. Instead, everything was questioned to change the way the story went until it turned into a completely different story and, eventually, no story at all. The root of the story Cinderella is that she was beautiful and poor and her stepmother was evil. It had a moral that being good defeats being evil. With the changes of her financial status, personality, even the way she looked, Cinderella was no longer a representation of being purely good, but being more realistic. After reading it a second time, I started to think about how this display of questioning everything is comparable to what is done in society. At some point, something than was done for years will eventually be questioned and possibly be changed. In a lot of ways, that’s how society tries to improve, even if the attempt doesn’t lead to success. If we were to question everything about what we read, the way society does and the second speaker in this story, we could unlock a lot of different themes in our readings. We can also get an idea and better understanding about who the author is and who the characters are.
One element of fiction that has changed for me is imagery. I started out this story, knowing how I viewed Cinderella based on prior knowledge and readings, as well as the intro to the story. By the end, Cinderella was a different person, in a different setting. Her image became more common and didn’t feel like a fairy tale, but as if this story was really happening. It was no longer a one-sided story, but I became curious of the different aspects of the characters. The stepmother wasn’t just an evil person and Cinderella wasn’t all good, so it changed the way I viewed them.

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