"Six Feet of the Country" is a powerful, compact story that exposes the dehumanizing nature of colonialism. It moves beyond the political to the deeply personal,
A Black farm worker, recently married, suddenly collapses and dies. The farmer (Sally’s husband, an Afrikaner) and his wife (Sally, the narrator) must arrange burial and notify the authorities. The local policeman, magistrate, and registrar become involved. The white couple are chiefly anxious about paperwork, property, and neighborly appearances. Sally observes the dead man’s body and family; she experiences discomfort and intermittent empathy, but ultimately aligns with the prevailing system—organizing burial with minimal acknowledgment of the deceased’s personhood beyond administrative needs. six feet of the country by nadine gordimer summary
, move from Johannesburg to a farm ten miles outside the city, hoping the rural lifestyle will repair their strained marriage. The Incident : One night, their farmhand reveals that his brother—an illegal immigrant from "Six Feet of the Country" is a powerful,
To retrieve the body from the morgue, the family needs a coffin. Furthermore, the government requires a payment of —a significant sum at the time—to release the body. The workers pool their meager wages, and the narrator contributes a few pounds to make up the difference. They purchase a cheap coffin and a hearse. , move from Johannesburg to a farm ten
Nadine Gordimer’s short story “Six Feet of the Country” (first published 1956) explores how apartheid-era South African racial hierarchies deform private life, grief, and human dignity. Set on a farm where a Black laborer’s sudden death confronts a white Afrikaner couple with institutionalized expectations and personal anxieties, the story compresses political critique, psychological realism, and moral ambiguity into a tightly controlled narrative. This paper analyzes Gordimer’s thematic concerns, narrative techniques, character dynamics, symbolism, and ethical implications, arguing that the story stages both a critique of apartheid’s social machinery and a probe into how systemic injustice becomes internalized and reproduced by ordinary people.
The climax of the story occurs after the burial. The narrator, feeling he has done his good deed for the day, asks Petrus for the leftover wood from the shipping crate.