"Six Feet of the Country" is a short story by South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, first published in her 1956 collection of the same name. The story is a sharp critique of apartheid-era South Africa, focusing on themes of bureaucratic indifference, racial inequality, and the emotional distance between white landowners and Black South Africans.
Petrus explains that the family of the deceased does not want him buried in the cheap, anonymous "native grave" on the outskirts of town. Instead, they want his body transported to his home village (a six-hour drive away) to be buried with his ancestors, according to their customs. They have raised money for the transport and ask the narrator for permission and a simple coffin. six feet of the country by nadine gordimer summary
The narrator, a practical and cynical businessman more concerned with profit than people, refuses. He argues that a coffin costs money, and the city health regulations require a death certificate and official transport. He dismisses the family’s wishes as “superstition” and arranges for the body to be buried in the municipal native cemetery—a barren, unmarked patch of land. Overview "Six Feet of the Country" is a
The narrator feels guilt, but it is a self-centered guilt. He wants to help Petrus not out of love for Johannes, but to soothe his own conscience for having refused the pass. Throughout the quest, the narrator and Petrus never truly communicate. They speak different languages not only literally but emotionally. When Petrus says, “He said he would come back,” the narrator hears a sad saying. But for Petrus, it is a broken covenant—a failure of the world to respect even the last wish of a dying man. Instead, they want his body transported to his
The title, “Six Feet of the Country,” is bitterly ironic. The narrator owns six miles of the country—land he uses for profit. Petrus’s family asks for only six feet of it—a grave. The state denies even that. In a deeper sense, the country does not belong to Johannes or Petrus. Their real home is the “reserves,” the impoverished, overcrowded Bantustans to which the apartheid state confined black people. The story argues that for a black South African, the entire country is a foreign land, except for the six feet of ancestral soil in which one hopes to be buried.
