In South African culture, and specifically in the traditions of the workers, death is not an end but a transition. To die far from home, without family, and to be buried in a potter’s field by the state is a tragedy. Petrus asks for permission to bring his brother’s body back to the farm to be buried properly among his own people.
The narrator, who is a partner in a luxury travel agency in Johannesburg, reluctantly agrees to help. He descends into the bureaucratic labyrinth of the city's health department, a world completely alien to him and, as he discovers, horrifyingly indifferent to the lives of Black people. The officials demand a payment of twenty pounds for the exhumation, a significant sum of money. The narrator, thinking of the high cost of his own life in the city, feels the sum is too much and tries to dissuade Petrus. However, the farmworkers, who have been saving what little money they have, pool their resources to raise the fee, proving how much a proper burial means to them. Shamed by their determination, the narrator pays the money and successfully arranges for the coffin to be returned.
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Here is a comprehensive summary, analysis, and exploration of the themes within Gordimer’s work. six feet of the country by nadine gordimer summary
Gordimer’s prose is precise and clinical, mirroring the coldness of the apartheid bureaucracy. The ending is particularly haunting. The farmer observes the burial, noting the "efficient" way the workers dig the grave despite their grief. There is no grand emotional outburst, only a quiet, suffocating sense of defeat.
To further explore the story, consider these questions:
When the municipal health authorities take the body for a post-mortem, Petrus desperately asks the narrator to retrieve it for a proper burial. The narrator’s initial attempts fail when he learns the body has already been disposed of, but Petrus’s persistent grief eventually compels him to act. Petrus and the other farm workers pool their meager resources, and the narrator reluctantly goes to the city and pays a twenty-pound fee to have the body exhumed. In South African culture, and specifically in the
Petrus is the moral center of the story. As the foreman, he must navigate the impossible terrain of pleasing his white employer while protecting his people. He exhibits immense dignity, leadership, and quiet resilience. By organizing the collection of the twenty pounds, Petrus demonstrates the profound communal bonds and cultural values of the Black South Africans—values that completely eclipse the transactional worldview of the narrator. Core Themes The Commodification and Dehumanization of Black Lives
The narrator views the farm through a lens of privileged detachment. For him, it is a hobby and a status symbol. He employs a staff of Black laborers, led by an old, trusted worker named Petrus. The narrator treats these workers with a patronizing, business-like tolerance, believing himself to be a fair employer while remaining completely detached from their inner lives, struggles, and legal vulnerabilities. The Midnight Discovery
The story highlights how systemic racism reduces human lives to mere administrative tasks. The authorities show no empathy for the family’s grief. The mix-up of the corpses illustrates a stark truth: to the apartheid regime, all black bodies were interchangeable and faceless. Marital and Social Alienation The narrator, who is a partner in a
The story follows an unnamed white narrator and his wife, Lerice, who have moved to a farm outside Johannesburg to escape city life and improve their strained marriage. Their quiet existence is disrupted when a young migrant worker from Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe)—the brother of their farmhand, Petrus—dies of pneumonia.
The story begins by introducing the unnamed narrator and his wife, Lerice. Tired of their strained marriage and the racial tensions of Johannesburg, they have purchased a small farm ten miles outside the city. The narrator, a partner in a travel agency, believes they have escaped the city’s discord and established a peaceful, almost feudal, existence where their black workers “have nothing much to fear.” Lerice, a former actress, has thrown herself into the running of the farm, creating a domestic and professional distance between them.