Six Feet of the Country

Irony manifests in the plot as well as between the characters. In the story, the Black employees attempt to maintain their established cultural traditions through the burial of the young man, but they are forced to operate within the mindset and apathy of the white populations, something that becomes even more salient when they discover the wrong body in the coffin. They also realize they spent months’ worth of their salary only for the body never to be recovered, leading to the protagonist remarking how the only one to not lose money was the undertaker, who had done his job, and that the whole thing was “a complete waste” (20). Additionally, Petrus’s beliefs concerning his white employers are ironically disproven when the protagonist cannot retrieve the body through his own power, even though Petrus earlier believed that “white men have everything, can do anything” (13). The protagonist’s belief in his “triumph” of living in the country and escaping the problems of the city is also disproven by the end, as the corrupt political system affects even the farm, which he is powerless to stop.