Six Feet of the Country by Nadine Gordimer
Published 1956 · 58,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Short Fiction
How hard is Six Feet of the Country to read?
Six Feet of the Country scores 55 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 52 out of 100
- Gordimer writes in precise, controlled prose that avoids literary flourishes. Her early stories use accessible vocabulary to illuminate the daily reality of apartheid South Africa.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Sentences are crafted with careful attention to rhythm and implication. Gordimer's syntax is readable, carrying moral weight through understatement rather than complexity.
- Abstraction: 58 out of 100
- The stories work through concrete situations that embody larger truths about racial injustice. Gordimer doesn't theorize about apartheid; she shows its effects on specific lives and relationships.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- Each story is compressed, packing a world of social observation into brief narratives. Gordimer creates density through the accumulation of telling details about South African life under segregation.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- The title story follows a white farmer dealing with the death of an illegal worker on his property. The indirection comes from what the narrator cannot or will not see about his own complicity in the system.
- Symbolic density: 58 out of 100
- The six feet of earth in the title—the depth of a grave—becomes symbolic of the unbridgeable distance between races in apartheid South Africa. Small objects and gestures carry the weight of systemic injustice.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Gordimer's narrators often reveal more than they understand. The irony cuts against white characters who believe themselves to be decent while participating in an indecent system. Her moral clarity never becomes preaching.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- The stories end without redemption or transformation. Gordimer refuses consolation, leaving her characters trapped in the structures of apartheid that the stories expose.
- Structural complexity: 48 out of 100
- Individual stories are straightforward in structure, following characters through revealing moments. The collection's power comes from the accumulation of perspectives on a society structured by racial violence.
How Six Feet of the Country is regarded
Six Feet of the Country holds a literary regard score of 81 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.