Six Feet Of The Country By Nadine Gordimer Summary Jun 2026
When they return to the farm, the reality of the poverty faced by the servants is laid bare. The Black workers on the farm pool their meager savings. They have managed to gather the necessary seven guineas, but there is a catch. The hearse service has a fee, and the total cost rises to roughly ten pounds. The laborers are short of the total sum.
The Illusion of Proximity: Isolation and the Failure of Empathy in Nadine Gordimer’s Six Feet of the Country
Nadine Gordimer’s 1953 short story "Six Feet of the Country" examines the corrosive impact of South African apartheid, portraying how a white couple's move to a farm cannot shield them from the system's inherent brutality. The narrative highlights themes of inequity and bureaucratic failure, focusing on a farmhand named Petrus who is unable to secure a proper burial for his brother due to the oppressive state apparatus. For a detailed breakdown, read the SuperSummary guide . Six Feet of the Country Summary and Study Guide six feet of the country by nadine gordimer summary
The story unfolds on a farm near Johannesburg, owned by a white couple, Mr. and Mrs. Biermann. The setting is deceptively idyllic. The farmers live a life of comfort, insulated from the harsh realities faced by their Black servants and laborers. Gordimer establishes this world not through heavy exposition, but through the casual indifference of the white characters.
The story ends not with outrage but with a hollow, exhausted irony. The white man, who owns acres of land, feels no possession of this tiny plot. The dead black man, who owned nothing, now possesses his six feet—the only real estate that mattered. When they return to the farm, the reality
Nadine Gordimer, the South African Nobel laureate, was a master of dissecting the complex, often painful anatomy of her homeland. In her short story Six Feet of the Country , she strips away the grand political narratives of the Apartheid era to focus on a quiet, domestic tragedy. The story is not about riots or police brutality in the streets; it is about the silent, bureaucratic cruelty that permeated everyday life.
The unnamed narrator, a white man, and his wife (referred to only as “my wife”) have left Johannesburg to run a “trading store” on a small piece of land. They are not wealthy; they are small-time entrepreneurs straddling two worlds. Their house is basic, their store sells cheap goods to black migrant workers passing through. The narrator makes it clear that he and his wife have no romantic illusions about Africa. They are not settlers on a mission; they are pragmatists who bought the land cheaply to make a living. The hearse service has a fee, and the
One morning, Petrus comes to the back door with terrible news: Lazarus is dead. He died in the cramped, unventilated room behind the store where the workers slept. The narrator’s immediate reaction is not grief but inconvenience. He thinks of the health regulations, the paperwork, and the disruption to his daily routine.
The story is also notable for what it doesn’t show. We never hear the family’s story in their own words. We never learn Lazarus’s thoughts. This absence is itself a political statement: under apartheid, black voices are silenced, their stories told only through the lens of white perception.