Published in 1956, "Six Feet of the Country" is one of Nadine Gordimer’s most compelling short stories. Set during the height of South African apartheid, the narrative exposes the deep racial, economic, and social divisions of the era. Gordimer, a Nobel Prize laureate, uses a deceptive domestic setting to critique the systemic injustices forced upon the Black majority by the white ruling class.
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Gordimer juxtaposes the extreme privilege of the white narrators with the absolute vulnerability of the Black workers. The narrator views the loss of twenty pounds as a minor administrative annoyance. For Petrus and his family, that same amount represents an unimaginable sacrifice. The narrator has the freedom to buy a farm as a luxury hobby, while Petrus’s brother cannot even cross a border to find work without risking his life. Marital and Social Alienation six feet of the country by nadine gordimer summary
The story is a powerful exploration of how apartheid capitalism commodified Black life. The boy's journey from Rhodesia to Johannesburg was in search of work, of being a human commodity for labor. In death, his body is treated as a thing to be processed. The twenty-pound fee for the exhumation reduces a sacred family ritual to a financial transaction. The narrator's own thinking is tainted by this worldview, as he initially balks at the fee, mentally comparing it to the cost of the boy's medical treatment when he was alive. The final, horrifying image of the body possibly ending up as "layers of muscle and strings of nerve" in a medical school is the ultimate expression of this dehumanization: the reduction of a person to raw material.
not only serves as a critique of apartheid South Africa but also poses universal questions about human rights, dignity, and the valuation of human life across different cultures and societies. Through this story, Gordimer challenges readers to reflect on their own moral and ethical positions regarding social justice and human equality. Published in 1956, "Six Feet of the Country"
The disconnect between the narrator and Lerice mirrors the broader division in South African society. Lerice possesses empathy and attempts to connect with the workers, whereas the narrator is detached, cynical, and driven by economic utility. Their inability to communicate or share the same values reflects the fractured nature of a society built on forced segregation. Character Analysis
The story drips with both and situational irony. The title itself is a bitter irony. The narrator's early declarations of "triumph" are proven hollow. The most powerful moment of irony is the climax: after all the struggle and expense, the body they get is the wrong one. This is not just a tragedy; it's a mockery of their efforts and a scathing commentary on the state's dehumanizing incompetence. If you'd like to explore this story further,
For white South Africans, land is property and business. For Black South Africans, land is ancestral belonging and identity. Lucas’s pauper’s grave versus Petrus’s request for family land starkly contrasts these views.
Gordimer emphasizes that while white lives are treated with dignity, Black lives are treated as bureaucratic problems. The mistake with the grave highlights how little care is given to the resting place of a Black person, contrasting sharply with the care a white family would expect.