Six Feet of the Country

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.