Nadine Gordimer Reader Response

Nadine Gordimer

            After reading “Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants”, “Amnesty”, and “Six Feet of Country” I have developed a respect for Nadine Gordimer not only for her stories, but for her views and perspectives of racism throughout her each of them. Out of all the stories, I liked “Six Feet of Country” the best because emotionally it appealed to me on how bad racism and treatment of the servants was. 

            I agree with Nadine’s anger with how the servants in this story are treated and how marriage is perceived as well. The first quote I came to that angered me was, “You long to hear nothing but a deep satisfying silence when you sound a marriage.”  This already let me know the story would anger me. Marriage is about happiness and being in love with the person you marry, but in this story the narrator only complains about his wife and basically how horrible she is which is a sign he shouldn’t have married her to begin with. Secondly I did not like the narrator and his egocentrism, everyone on the farm did the work to keep it running but the narrator took the credit for the farm running the way it does. Especially when he states, “I, of course am there only in the evenings and at weekends, I am a partner to a travel agency which is flourishing- needs to be, as I tell Lerice, in order to carry the farm.”  He also refers to the servants as children when truly they are men and women, adults at that, and to me this show a lack of respect and the thought that the narrator is better than everyone else.

            Personally this story was almost easy to relate to but yet there was a barrier because racism still is an ongoing problem in society today the barrier is that it isn’t as open as it was back then. In society, I have personally dealt with friends who are racist and people in society who is racist and it was an unpleasant feeling listening to how they talked to black people and would treat them. My main view is that everyone was created equal and no one person is better than another, dealing with racism is hard especially when egocentrism is involved.

            Overall, I agree with Nadine Gordimer and her views on racism, I also find her to be a very creative author and credible for her work because she was a white writer living in Africa she knew what was going first hand. Her stories also related to real issues and were painted in a visual picture of what the problem was and why she either agreed or disagreed through a pleasant or emotionally trying story.