The Displaced Person (1954, revised 1955). Content and Description

A short version of “The Displaced Person” was printed in the fall 1954 Sewanee Review. One year later, Harcourt, Brace published it in its revised, expanded, and final form as part of O’Connor’s collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find. As many of O’Connor’s stories do, “The Displaced Person” takes place on a rural farm where the presence of an outsider changes not only the way people on the farm live but also the way they think about the world. The farm owner, Mrs. McIntyre, a three- times-married 60-year-old woman, worries about money and the general laziness of her workers.

She has seen several generations of white farmhands come and go and has learned the ways of the black farmworkers, originally employed by Mrs. McIntyre’s first, deceased husband, the Judge. Unlike other O’Connor stories in which outsiders are often con artists who manipulate gullible others, this story focuses on characters who are, in one way or another, displaced, meaning “they ain’t where they were born at and there’s nowhere for them to go.” The most notable of these displaced persons is a Polish emigre, Mr. Guizac, who, with his family, becomes the subject of gossip not only among the other farmworkers but also among xenophobic townsfolk who feel threatened by Guizac’s industriousness, pleasant demeanor, and foreign tongue.

The story opens with a peacock that follows Mrs. Shortley, the wife of Mrs. McIntyre’s most recently hired farmhand, Chancey Shortley. O’Connor introduces the reader to the farm through the eyes of the ironically named Mrs. Shortley, who stands “on tremendous legs . . . with the self-confidence of a mountain” and peers through “two icy blue points of light,” “surveying everything.” The peacock appears throughout the story, always accompanied by descriptive language that hints at its symbolic qualities.

Although Mrs. McIntyre views the bird as another mouth to feed, the narrator shrouds the animal in mystery and makes it the object of Father Flynn’s affection. In this way, O’Connor frames the mundane world with the sacred, hinting at the grace-filled wonder of the bird that appears in a supernatural light as a black car appears on the horizon. O’Connor contrasts the peacock’s mystical presence with Mrs. Shortley’s worldly, skeptical, and fundamentalist thinking.

The first part of the story paints a picture of the farm, reveals the personalities of its inhabitants, and relates the Guizac family’s arrival. Father Flynn, who frequently visits Mrs. McIntyre with the aim of converting her to Catholicism, has driven out this day to deliver Mr. Guizac, whom Mrs. McIntyre hires to work on the farm. The first section details how Mr. Guizac’s industriousness jeopardizes Shortley’s livelihood and how the Shortleys quickly abandon the farm when they find out that Mrs. McIntyre plans to fire Chancey.

The second part of the story focuses on the ways that Guizac threatens the black farmworkers. Hoping to turn Mrs. McIntyre against the Pole, the workers reveal Guizac’s plan to bring his cousin to the farm so that she can marry one of the farmhands. Enraged by Guizac’s manipulations, she vows to fire him, proclaiming, “I am not responsible for the world’s misery.” Later, toward the story’s conclusion, the ironic comment returns to haunt her. In part 3 Mr. Shortley returns the farm (his wife has died of a sudden heart attack). Embittered, Shortley badgers Mrs. McIntyre and the townsfolk about Guizac’s demonic presence. The story ends with a violent scene: A large tractor runs over Guizac, who, after receiving last rites from the priest, dies before the others, who crowd around an ambulance.

Referred to by McIntyre as the “Displaced Person” or simply “D.P.,” Guizac is a concentration camp survivor, who, with the priest’s and Mrs. McIntyre’s assistance, immigrates to America with his wife and children. Skeptical of the foreigner, Mrs. Shortley calls him “Gobblehook,” even though his presence reminds her of a newsreel of “a small room piled high with bodies of dead naked people,” a vision of the Holocaust.

Despite Mrs. Shortley’s reservations and her visions of others’ suffering, she demonizes the displaced Pole. Yet, he becomes a saintlike figure in Mrs. McIntyre’s eyes. An “expert mechanic, carpenter, and a mason,” Guizac works quickly and efficiently. Unlike Mr. Shortley, Guizac is clean and does not smoke. He is Mrs. McIntyre’s ideal worker, a strong man capable of running the farm and generating the income she craves. Guizac, however, becomes the object of her scorn when she discovers that he is trying to save another displaced person, his cousin, a victim of Nazi Germany’s campaign to eradicate cultural and racial difference.

The story concludes with one of O’Connor’s grand moments of realization, the violent death of the “D.P.,” during which Mrs. McIntyre’s eyes “and Mr. Shortley’s eyes and the Negro’s eyes come together in a look that froze them in collusion forever.” By not doing anything, by not speaking or acting, they become complicit partners in Guizac’s death, demonstrating how little the people on the farm understand about humanity and how little they are aware of grace at work in the world. Mrs. McIntyre equates Guizac with Christ: “Christ was just another D.P.” Symbolically, they all participate in Guizac’s crucifixion, an act that unites them and leads them to see their own displacement, their lack of connection with the divine. In the story’s ultimate reversal Mrs. McIntyre sees herself as lost, another “D.P.”: “Her mind was not taking a hold of all that was happening.

She felt she was in some foreign country where the people bent over the body were natives, and she watched like a stranger while the dead man was carried away in the ambulance.” Unable to process this moment of revelation, the farmworkers leave, and Mrs. McIntyre deteriorates. Refusing to understand and respond to suffering, she becomes, with the farm’s peacock, the recipient of the priest’s care. Whether she accepts the vision she has been given and moves toward salvation remains unclear. The short paragraph that ends the story describes Mrs. McIntyre as blind and mute, a displaced person among a world of others, who, as she has, have fallen from grace. While this vision of the world is indeed a dark one, the beautiful peacock remains, an outward, visible sign of the potential for salvation.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Both Mrs. McIntyre in “The Displaced Person” and Ruby Turpin in O’Connor’s story “Revelation” experience visions. How do these visions compare? Why are their visions significant?

2. The story often describes eyes and their color. Why is this significant? How do seeing and understanding figure into “The Displaced Person”?

3. The peacock, an object of the priest’s affection, is often described in colorful language and figures prominently in the story. Is the peacock symbolic? What does its presence add to the narrative?

4. Compare and contrast Mrs. Shortley in “The Displaced Person” with the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” In what ways can both be said to experience an awakening?