Six Feet Of The Country By Nadine Gordimer Summary Extra Quality

This article provides a detailed, paragraph-by-paragraph summary of the story, followed by an analysis of its major themes, characters, and symbolic weight. Part 1: The Setup – A Rural Business Venture The story is narrated by a white man, who remains unnamed. He and his wife, a liberal, well-intentioned couple, have left Johannesburg to run a small roadside "general dealer’s" store and a transport business in a rural area. They have also acquired a piece of land—"six miles of ground"—on which they hope to raise chickens and pigs. The narrator describes their relationship with the local black population as transactional but not unkind. They employ several black workers, and the narrator fancies himself a fair "baas" (boss), albeit one who keeps a comfortable distance from the personal lives of his employees.

Petrus is grief-stricken. The narrator’s wife is horrified by her husband’s callousness, but she does nothing to intervene. The local police are called, and the body is taken away by the municipal “native burial” service. Petrus comes to the narrator again. This time, his request is different. He explains that in his tribal custom (the story vaguely suggests he is Xhosa or a similar group), it is essential for a person to be buried in the soil of his home, not in a strange, foreign place like the town’s pauper’s grave. The family has sent money from the reserves. Petrus wants to retrieve Johannes’s body—or at least have it exhumed—so that it can be transported back home for a proper burial. All he needs is the narrator’s help: a letter, a car, a voice of authority. six feet of the country by nadine gordimer summary

The narrator reads the letter to Petrus. He tries to soften the blow, to explain that he fought as hard as he could. Petrus stands in silence. Then, for the first time, the narrator sees a true emotion in his face—not anger, but a profound, silent grief and a dawning realization of the nature of the world he lives in. Petrus does not thank the narrator. He simply turns and walks away. They have also acquired a piece of land—"six

One evening, a young African man who works for them—a garden boy named Petrus—approaches the narrator. Petrus is anxious. He explains that his younger brother, who has been visiting from a distant rural area (the "reserves"), is very sick. The brother’s name is Johannes. Petrus asks the narrator for a pass to take Johannes to town to see a white doctor. The narrator is irritated. He is tired after a long day, and he views Petrus’s request as an inconvenience. He does not want to get involved. He coldly informs Petrus that he cannot issue a pass; only the native commissioner can do that. He tells Petrus to take his brother to the "kaffer doctor" (a derogatory term for a traditional healer), as that is “good enough for them.” Petrus persists, pleading that his brother is coughing blood and is very ill, but the narrator dismisses him. In a moment of self-justification, the narrator later tells his wife that the rules are the rules, and if he started issuing passes for every sick relative, he would be overrun. Petrus is grief-stricken

The couple lives in a small cottage attached to the store. They are outsiders: white, English-speaking, and Jewish in a predominantly Afrikaner rural district. They feel a sense of superiority over their Afrikaner neighbors, whom they consider crude, and a sense of frustrated benevolence toward the black people, whom they see as childlike and in need of firm management.

In the end, Petrus stands alone by the cross on the narrator’s land. The six feet of the country he receives are not his brother’s homeland, but a foreign patch of earth, grudgingly given, forever owned by another. The story remains a timeless exploration of how property, race, and bureaucracy can combine to deny even the most fundamental human need: to go home for the final sleep.