The story is narrated by a white man who, with his wife, runs a small trading store and a piece of land just outside a major city (implied to be Johannesburg). They have recently moved there from the city, seeking a quieter life, and employ several Black workers.
The central conflict begins when one of their workers, a young man named Petrus, asks for permission to bring his younger brother, Lucas, from the countryside to live on the property. The narrator reluctantly agrees. However, Lucas is restless and rebellious. He frequently leaves the property without permission, which violates the strict pass laws of apartheid that control Black movement.
One morning, the narrator learns that Lucas has disappeared. Days later, a neighbor informs him that Lucas’s body has been found by the roadside. He was likely picked up by police for not having his passbook, died in custody (possibly from a beating), and his body was dumped.
The narrator, driven by a sense of duty and mild guilt, goes to the city morgue to claim the body so it can be buried properly by Petrus and the family. But he is met with an impenetrable bureaucracy. The officials refuse to release the body without a permit from the pass office. He travels from office to office, facing indifference, rudeness, and paperwork. The pass office officials, who are white, care only about the legal status of Lucas’s pass, not about his death or the family’s grief.
After days of futile effort, the narrator finally obtains permission—only to be told that the body has already been buried in a pauper’s grave on state land, a common fate for unclaimed Black bodies.
The climax is deeply ironic and tragic. The narrator, defeated, returns and tells Petrus. He offers to buy a headstone for the unmarked pauper’s grave, but Petrus declines. Instead, Petrus asks for something else: “Six feet of your ground… to bury my brother.” He wants a proper family grave on the land where Lucas lived and died.
The narrator agrees. In the final lines, he realizes that Lucas, who had tried to escape the white man’s land, is now permanently buried in it. The narrator reflects: “But he had got his six feet of the country… and he was not going to give it back.”
The phrase recurs throughout the story. Initially, the narrator owns “six miles” but cannot spare “six feet” for a grave. Later, the state denies even that. Finally, the narrator gives Petrus six feet of his own property—but it is a hollow victory. The six feet of the title are not just a grave; they are a measure of how little of their own country black South Africans were permitted to own. It is also a measure of the narrator’s moral bankruptcy: he can give land, but he cannot give dignity, home, or peace.