Six Feet of the Country

Fiction | Short Story | Adult

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Farmland

Life in the countryside, as it is slowly disrupted by apartheid forces, symbolizes a vulnerability to corrupt political systems; the disruption also illustrates The Insidious Nature of the Apartheid Ethos. The story initially presents the farmland as a safe place away from the racial tensions of the city. The story’s most lighthearted passages describe the farm’s natural beauty, further contrasting the farm with the city and emphasizing the countryside’s unspoiled quality: “[T]he farm is beautiful in a way I had almost forgotten […] not the palm trees and fishpond and imitation-stone bird bath of the suburbs but white ducks on the dam, the lucerne field brilliant as window-dresser’s grass […]” (8).

Soon enough, though, the city police question the protagonist’s laissez-faire approach to his Black employees. This is the first sign of urban apartheid influence threatening the relatively peaceful rural environment. By the end of the story, after humiliations and irreparable betrayals by the mortuary officials, the mood on the farm is less idealistic. Even from a distance in the city, the white authorities have unmitigated control over intimate aspects of the Black characters’ lives.

The Sergeant

The police sergeant appears briefly as a representation of the city’s political mindset. When the protagonist mentions not wanting to interfere with his employees as long as they worked, the sergeant glances at him “with a mixture of scorn and delight at [his] stupidity” (12), wordlessly expressing the apartheid ethos and its distinct viewpoint of the Black population. The sergeant is a mouthpiece for the political ideal that the Black population should be “supervised.” Additionally, his attitude that the protagonist is “stupid” is ironic, as the sergeant is the one with the empty mind; his facial expression is “one of those looks that come not from any thinking process going on in the brain but from that faculty common to all who are possessed by the master-race theory” (12). The description is likely an allusion to “the banality of evil,” a concept formulated by philosopher Hannah Arendt, who argued evil can take the form of thoughtlessness. Arendt’s thesis draws on her observations of Nazi bureaucracy, and Gordimer’s story likewise portrays apartheid bureaucracy as vacuous and even oddly motiveless in some of its egregious actions. For instance, when the mortuary staff loses the body, the protagonist “had the feeling that they were shocked, in a laconic fashion, by their own mistake, but that in the confusion of their anonymous dead they were helpless to put it right” (18).

The Donkey

The donkey exists as a stalwart symbol of the Black population’s perseverance despite the disparaging influence of apartheid ideology. The white officials’ apathy derails the cultural traditions of the Black population, but the donkey, described as “patient” by the protagonist, continues pushing the cart past even “with an air submissive and downcast” (16), symbolizing how the Black characters’ cultural traditions, or at least part of it, continues despite white influence. The donkey’s description as a “Biblical symbol” also refers to its patience, which emphasizes how the employees maintain a quiet triumph even in mourning (however briefly), and that the indigenous population continues to persevere despite obstacles.