Division

The author saturates "Six Feet of the Country" with images of duality in order to explore the ways that social and racial division impact the individual's spirit and mind. These images of contrast include: the narrator versus his wife, the country versus the city, and black versus white. At the start of the short story, the narrator begins his account describing the differences between life on the farm and life in Johannesburg. "We bought our place, ten miles out of Johannesburg on one of the main roads, to change something in ourselves, I suppose...The farm hasn't managed that for us, of course, but it has done other things, unexpected, illogical" (7). The narrator tells the reader that he and Lerice believed the farm could solve their marital issues. While he suggests in this passage that the farm has disappointed him and his wife, in fact it...