Nadine Gordimer's short story "Six Feet of the Country"

An analysis of Nadine Gordimer’s short story

 Six Feet of the Country

By Isaiah Cabanero

          As narrated in the short story “Six Feet of the Country” by Nadine Gordimer: “We bought our place, ten miles out of Johannesburg on one of the main roads, to change something in ourselves, I suppose; you seem to rattle about so much with a marriage like ours. You long to hear nothing but a deep satisfying silence when you sound a marriage. The farm hasn’t managed that for us, of course, but it has done other things, unexpected, illogical.”

          Upon these lines that, in part, opened the story, in some way, presents the state of mind of the protagonist in the story, the narrator, himself a married white man, living as master or baas (a South African term for “boss” or “master”) in his farm a few miles out of the city of Johannesburg in South Africa; and these may as very well present the ultimate thesis of the short story itself. To simply put things out, solely based on those opening lines, a “change” must have been sought, so a “search” or “journey” to a far away is supposed and is set foot for this “change”, and whether or not that “change” sought was found in the far away indeed, all that is just clear and known here is the fact, rooted from the narrator’s testimony, that the “search” brought about other things: things unexpected and things illogical. ...

To continue reading the article, click here.

Tonight, One Poem

Beer,
by George Arnold

     HERE,
     With my beer
     I sit,
     While golden moments flit:
     Alas!
     They pass
     Unheeded by:
     And, as they fly,
     I,
     Being dry,
     Sit, idly sipping here
     My beer.
     O, finer far
     Than fame, or riches, are
     The graceful smoke-wreathes of this cigar!
     Why
     Should I
     Weep, wail, or sigh?
     What if luck has passed me by?
     What if my hopes are dead,—
     My pleasures fled?
     Have I not still
     My fill
     Of right good cheer,—
     Cigars and beer.
     Go, whining youth,
     Forsooth!
     Go, weep and wail,
     Sigh and grow pale,
        Weave melancholy rhymes
        On the old times,
     Whose joys like shadowy ghosts appear,
     But leave me to my beer!
        Gold is dross,—
        Love is loss,—
     So, if I gulp my sorrows down,
     Or see them drown
     In foamy draughts of old nut-brown,
     Then do wear the crown,
        Without the cross!

Today, One Quote

"One has only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced by commonplace ideas, and [the] idea will by no means seem so... strange."

Some Poems from "Leaves Of Grass" by Walt Whitman

                               9
What do you seek so pensive and silent?
What do you need camerado?
Dear son do you think it is love?

Listen dear son—listen America, daughter or son,
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it
satisfies, it is great,
But there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide,
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and
provides for all.

                               25
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself,
It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically,
Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then?

Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation,
Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost,
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
I underlying causes to balance them at last,
My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things,
Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of
this day.)

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am,
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Tonight, One Quote

"Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness. There exists a striking association between creativity and manic depression. Why are more creative people prone to madness? They have more than average amounts of energies and abilities to see things in a fresh and original way -- then because they also have depression, I think they're more in touch with human suffering."  

Is it foolish to romanticize life?

YES.

To romanticize life ... is such a foolish act to do. Such a foolish act indeed. 

But you must ask me, must ask me!, "would you romanticize life?" -- yes. Oh, yes.

It is as foolish to do as jumping into the Green lake in the summer, in my underpants. Or perhaps naked, braving the ice-cold lush waters. (Sweat starts to condensate upon my palms as I type these words, I'm noticing. I'd put to say that my palms are feeling the heat within these words that I type...ing) Again, it is such a foolish thing to do, and a foolish thought to think of too! But what's more romantic to a man to be thought of other than of a fool, such a foolish fool? 

Thinking of the times I feel the sky is talking to me, or the light that is filtered through my window's blind displaying the mood of the moment in me I am left wordless to describe or name. 

Such is a foolish feeling. And such a fool I am of a man to feel such. Yet I feel sweet romance.

Tonight, One Quote

Leopold had written to Loeb:

"A superman ... is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do."

Tonight, One Essay

An analysis of Nadine Gordimer’s short story

 Six Feet of the Country

By Isaiah Cabanero

            As narrated in the short story “Six Feet of the Country” by Nadine Gordimer: “We bought our place, ten miles out of Johannesburg on one of the main roads, to change something in ourselves, I suppose; you seem to rattle about so much with a marriage like ours. You long to hear nothing but a deep satisfying silence when you sound a marriage. The farm hasn’t managed that for us, of course, but it has done other things, unexpected, illogical.”

             Upon these lines that, in part, opened the story, in some way, presents the state of mind of the protagonist in the story, the narrator, himself a married white man, living as master or baas (a South African term for “boss” or “master”) in his farm a few miles out of the city of Johannesburg in South Africa; and these may as very well present the ultimate thesis of the short story itself. To simply put things out, solely based on those opening lines, a “change” must have been sought, so a “search” or “journey” to a far away is supposed and is set foot for this “change”, and whether or not that “change” sought was found in the far away indeed, all that is just clear and known here is the fact, rooted from the narrator’s testimony, that the “search” brought about other things: things unexpected and things illogical. ...

Continue reading, click the link: An analysis of Nadine Gordimer's Six Feet of the Country by Isaiah Cabanero