Six Feet of the Country

Nadine Gordimer’s “Six Feet of the Country” is one of the seven short stories in her collection of the same name (1956). Gordimer, who was born and lived in South Africa, often explored the country’s racial issues in the context of apartheid. She received numerous literary awards, including the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature. This short story concerns the death of a native of Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe). When the young man’s family wants to give him a burial, the white mortuary staff’s incompetence thwarts those attempts and ultimately deprives the man of a grave—thus denying him a mere “six feet of the country.”

This study guide cites the 1982 Penguin Books paperback edition of the collection Six Feet of the Country. (Note: Throughout the story, a Black character refers to his white employer as baas. This is an Afrikaans term, loosely meaning “boss”)

The story opens with the unnamed white protagonist, who is also the story’s narrator, discussing how he and his wife, Lerice, bought a farm about 10 miles outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. Though they bought the farm “to change something in [themselves]” (7), the changes to his wife aren’t quite what he expected: Lerice has thrown herself into the farm work despite her ambitions to become a stage actress, upending the protagonist’s predictions that she would melodramatically (if temporarily) languish in the rural isolation.