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The Displaced Person

"The Displaced Person" is a short story by the American author Flannery O'Connor, first published in the Sewanee Review (Vol. 62, No. 4, October–December 1954) and subsequently collected in her 1955 anthology A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories.^[1]^[2] Set on a Georgia dairy farm in the late 1940s, the narrative depicts the arrival of Mr. Guizac, a skilled Polish refugee displaced by World War II and its aftermath, whose efficiency and foreignness provoke resentment and moral unraveling among the farm's white proprietor, Mrs. McIntyre, and her tenant workers, including the xenophobic Shortleys, as well as the black laborers.^[3]^[2] O'Connor employs her characteristic Southern Gothic elements—grotesque characters, violent denouements, and ironic revelations—to probe causal dynamics of prejudice, where the Guizacs' displacement mirrors broader postwar migrations and exposes the farm community's entrenched hierarchies of race and class, ultimately framing human resistance to change as a barrier to redemptive grace rooted in Catholic doctrine.^[4]^[5] The story's defining tragedy arises not from the refugee's actions but from the natives' hypocritical self-interest, culminating in Mr. Guizac's accidental death under a tractor, which forces confrontations with complicity in evil and the limits of secular order.^[2]^[6] Scholarly interpretations emphasize its critique of mid-20th-century American insularity, though some academic readings impose anachronistic lenses that overlook O'Connor's intentional portrayal of sin as a universal disruptor indifferent to ideological fashions.^[7]^[8]

Publication History

Writing Context and Revisions

Flannery O'Connor composed "The Displaced Person" in 1953–1954 while residing on her mother's dairy farm, Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia, following her 1950 diagnosis with disseminated lupus, which confined her to the rural South.^[9] The story drew direct inspiration from events on the farm that summer, when O'Connor's mother, Regina, hired a Polish displaced person named Al Matysiak and his family through the post-World War II refugee resettlement program; they occupied a tenant house and contributed to farm operations without the dramatic conflicts depicted in the fiction.^[9]^[10] O'Connor, a devout Catholic observing Southern Protestant attitudes toward European Catholic immigrants, used this experience to explore themes of displacement, racial hierarchies, and spiritual pride amid the broader U.S. Displaced Persons Act of 1948, which admitted over 200,000 refugees by 1952.^[11] The initial manuscript evolved into a shorter version first published in the Sewanee Review in Autumn 1954, emphasizing overseer Mrs. Shortley's xenophobic resentment toward the Guizac family rather than the full ensemble of characters.^[12] O'Connor revised the story extensively for inclusion in her 1955 collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find, expanding it into a three-part structure that deepened portrayals of farm owner Mrs. McIntyre's hypocrisy and the priest's role, while enhancing Mr. Guizac's sympathetic diligence and the narrative's theological undertones of grace and judgment.^[12]^[11] In a November 15, 1954, letter to her editor Robert Giroux, she affirmed using only the longer, revised form, noting its alignment with her intent to depict unassimilable otherness disrupting entrenched social orders.^[11] These changes shifted focus from isolated bigotry to a broader critique of communal displacement, reflecting O'Connor's correspondence-era concerns with postwar Catholic integration in the Protestant South.^[13]

Initial Appearances and Collection

"The Displaced Person" first appeared in the Autumn 1954 issue of The Sewanee Review, volume 62, number 4 (October–December), occupying pages 634–654.^[14] This publication marked the story's debut in a prestigious literary quarterly associated with the University of the South, featuring original fiction alongside essays and reviews.^[15] The initial version focused primarily on the character Mrs. Shortley's escalating prejudice against the Polish refugee family, setting the stage for the narrative's exploration of displacement and moral reckoning.^[12] The story was revised and expanded before its inclusion in O'Connor's first short story collection, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, published by Harcourt, Brace and Company on May 20, 1955.^[16] In this anthology of ten stories, "The Displaced Person" served as the longest piece, comprising a significant portion of the volume's thematic emphasis on grace amid human flaws.^[17] The collection received critical attention for its Southern Gothic style and sold modestly upon release, with the story contributing to O'Connor's emerging reputation for incisive portrayals of postwar Southern society.^[18] Subsequent reprints of the collection, including editions by publishers like Farrar, Straus and Giroux, have preserved the revised text as the canonical version.^[19]

Historical and Biographical Context

Post-World War II Displaced Persons Program

The Displaced Persons Act of 1948, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on June 25, 1948, authorized the admission of up to 200,000 European displaced persons (DPs)—primarily refugees uprooted by World War II, including forced laborers, concentration camp survivors, and ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe—into the United States for permanent residence over a two-year period.^[20]^[21] The legislation responded to the plight of approximately 11 million DPs lingering in camps across occupied Europe by late 1947, many facing starvation, disease, and political persecution amid Cold War tensions, but it imposed strict criteria: applicants required certification as DPs by U.S. occupation authorities, medical clearance, and sponsorship by a U.S. citizen or organization willing to guarantee employment and prevent public charge status.^[20]^[22] Truman reluctantly signed the act despite vetoing earlier versions, criticizing its discriminatory provisions that prioritized pre-1945 camp residents (favoring Balts and Poles over later-displaced Jews) and allocated 50% of visas to agricultural and manual laborers, which systematically disadvantaged urban, skilled Jewish survivors concentrated in post-1945 camps.^[20]^[23] Administered by the Displaced Persons Commission (DPC), established under the act, the program processed applicants through International Refugee Organization (IRO) camps, emphasizing family reunification and anti-communist screening to exclude potential subversives.^[24] Sponsors, often employers in labor-short sectors like agriculture, industry, and domestic service, pledged jobs at prevailing wages; this facilitated rural placements where DPs filled farmhand roles amid postwar labor shortages, with organizations like Catholic charities and farm cooperatives aiding resettlement in states such as Georgia.^[22]^[25] By mid-1950, amid mounting backlogs and humanitarian pressure, Congress amended the act via the Internal Security Act, raising the quota to 415,000, extending deadlines to 1952, and easing some religious and occupational biases, though Jewish admissions remained underrepresented at about 22% of totals despite comprising over 80,000 eligible applicants.^[25] Ultimately, the program admitted around 400,000 DPs by 1952, with many experiencing cultural shock, exploitation by sponsors, and community resentment over job competition.^[25] Controversies underscored nativist and economic fears: a 1948 Gallup poll showed 53% public opposition, fueled by concerns over unemployment, housing strains, and "racial dilution" under lingering 1924 quota legacies, while farm lobbies supported agricultural visas but locals often viewed DPs as threats to wage standards.^[26] Proponents, including Truman and refugee advocates, highlighted moral imperatives from Allied liberation promises, yet implementation revealed biases—e.g., ethnic German expellees received preferential processing over Jewish DPs—reflecting congressional deference to anti-communist agrarian interests over equitable humanitarianism.^[20]^[23] These dynamics mirrored broader postwar tensions, where DPs' industriousness clashed with entrenched labor patterns, contributing to social frictions in resettlement areas.^[27]

Flannery O'Connor's Southern Catholic Perspective

Flannery O'Connor, raised in the Protestant-dominated American South and a convert's daughter who deepened her Roman Catholic faith amid regional skepticism, portrayed the clash between Southern insularity and Catholic universalism in "The Displaced Person." The narrative centers on a Polish Catholic refugee, Mr. Guizac, resettled on a Georgia farm through the local priest's efforts, embodying the Church's post-World War II charitable outreach to Europe's displaced via programs like the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. Guizac's industriousness—installing modern machinery and restoring efficiency—disrupts the farm's stagnant hierarchy, reflecting O'Connor's belief in Catholic social doctrine's emphasis on human dignity and ordered labor as paths to redemption, yet provoking violent rejection from natives steeped in prejudice.^[28]^[29] O'Connor's Southern context, drawn from her life on the family dairy farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she tended peacocks from the 1950s onward, infuses the story with authentic rural textures while critiquing the moral complacency of white landowners and black sharecroppers alike. The peacock, a recurring motif in her work symbolizing Christ's transfiguration and the Church's immortality—its tail unveiling an "eye" of divine judgment—struts ignored by the hypocritical Mrs. McIntyre, who fixates on economic displacement over spiritual insight, until her breakdown forces confrontation with transcendent order. This avian imagery underscores O'Connor's theological realism: grace intrudes violently into fallen lives, much as Guizac's Catholic piety exposes the farm's sinful disorder.^[30]^[31] In letters to correspondent Betty Hester, O'Connor disclosed adapting Catholic prayer imagery for key scenes, such as Mrs. Shortley's apocalyptic vision of "the frontiers of her true country," transforming the bigoted farmhand's death into a grotesque glimpse of judgment and mercy, where displaced souls confront eternal homelessness from God. Written amid her lupus-induced isolation, the story—composed between 1949 and 1954 with revisions emphasizing theological depth—reveals O'Connor's meta-awareness of her minority status as a Catholic intellectual in Georgia, where faith demanded unflinching depictions of sin's universality, including racial resentments uniting antagonists against Guizac's proposal to aid a Jewish relative through marriage to a black worker.^[32]^[30] Though O'Connor deemed the tale a partial failure in a November 25, 1955, letter to Hester for inadequately conveying her intended arc of divine charity's redemptive force, it exemplifies her conviction that true displacement is ontological—humanity's exile from grace—requiring Catholic sacraments and virtue to restore cosmic hierarchy amid Southern parochialism. Guizac's fate, crushed under a tractor in a sacrificial echo of Calvary, indicts collective pride, aligning with her essays like "The Church and the Fiction Writer" (1957), where she argued fiction must grapple with mystery beyond secular explanations.^[33]^[4]

Plot Summary

Part One: Arrival and Initial Tensions

The story opens on Mrs. McIntyre's dairy farm in rural Georgia, where the white tenant family of Mr. and Mrs. Shortley, along with the black farmhands Astor and Sulk, maintain a routine of limited productivity amid rundown equipment and a once-vibrant but now diminished peacock population.^[17] The local Catholic priest, Father Flynn, arrives with a Polish displaced persons family—the Guizacs—whom he has sponsored for resettlement on the farm following World War II displacement.^[17] ^[34] The family includes Mr. Guizac, his wife, their approximately twelve-year-old son, and nine-year-old daughter, who are installed in a vacant tenant shack furnished with donated items from town.^[17] Mrs. Shortley, observing from a distance, reacts with immediate hostility, interpreting the Guizacs' foreignness through distorted recollections of wartime newsreels depicting European atrocities and viewing them as inherently untrustworthy "hordes of stiffs" unfit for American soil.^[17] She warns Astor and Sulk that the newcomers threaten their positions, emphasizing a nativist belief that the Guizacs "ain't where they belong to be at" and invoking biblical imagery of displacement to justify her prejudice.^[17] ^[35] Mrs. McIntyre, initially wary of the arrangement but dressed in her finest for the priest's visit, is startled when Mr. Guizac kisses her hand in greeting, a gesture she finds overly familiar yet indicative of his deference.^[17] Within weeks, Mr. Guizac demonstrates exceptional diligence, repairing the farm's broken tractor, maintaining machinery with precision, and working longer hours than the existing hands, prompting Mrs. McIntyre to declare him her "salvation" for restoring efficiency to the dairy operations.^[17] ^[34] This efficiency breeds resentment among the Shortleys and black workers, who perceive it as a direct challenge to their lax routines; Mr. Shortley dismisses Guizac's skills as unsustainable, while Mrs. Shortley escalates her agitation, confronting Mrs. McIntyre about favoritism and fearing displacement for her own family.^[17] Tensions peak as Mrs. McIntyre signals intent to prioritize Guizac, leading the Shortleys to prepare their abrupt departure; en route, Mrs. Shortley suffers a massive stroke and dies, her final vision fixated on the intruders as apocalyptic figures.^[17] ^[35]

Part Two: Rising Conflicts and Improvements

In the ensuing months following the Guizacs' settlement, Mr. Guizac demonstrated exceptional proficiency in farm operations, mastering equipment such as the silage cutter, tractor, rotary hay baler, combine, and letz mill while serving as an adept mechanic, carpenter, and mason.^[1] His skills reduced Mrs. McIntyre's repair expenses by $20 per month and enabled the installation and maintenance of milking machines, significantly boosting dairy production and overall farm efficiency.^[1] Fields were harrowed with precision, prompting Mrs. McIntyre to invest in a new drag harrow, as Guizac's methodical approach contrasted sharply with the prior neglect by local hands.^[1] Mrs. McIntyre expressed satisfaction, declaring him dependable and her "salvation," and considered increasing his wages to retain him amid the priest's counsel.^[1]^[35] These advancements exacerbated tensions among the remaining farmhands, particularly the Black laborers Astor and Sulk, who resented Guizac's superior work ethic and feared displacement from their roles.^[12] Guizac's vigilance led to confrontations, such as catching Sulk attempting to steal a turkey, which he reported to Mrs. McIntyre, heightening friction and perceptions of him as an intrusive outsider.^[1] The farmhands' slothful habits clashed with Guizac's diligence, fostering envy and whispers of sabotage, though no overt acts materialized at this stage.^[12] Mrs. McIntyre, initially enamored with the productivity gains, began to waver as cultural and social barriers surfaced. A pivotal conflict arose when Guizac revealed plans to bring his displaced cousin from Europe, intending to arrange her marriage to Sulk to secure her entry and residence, a proposal rooted in his pragmatic view of alliances amid postwar displacement.^[1] This suggestion appalled Mrs. McIntyre, who interpreted it as endorsing racial intermarriage, violating her ingrained Southern prejudices against such unions.^[35] Despite the farm's tangible improvements—evidenced by enhanced yields and cost savings—she recoiled, viewing Guizac's foreign customs as a threat to established social orders, even as his labor promised financial stability.^[1]^[12] The incident underscored the irreconcilable clash between economic utility and entrenched biases, propelling interpersonal hostilities toward escalation.^[35]

Part Three: Climax and Displacement

In the third part of the story, Mrs. McIntyre confronts Father Flynn about Mr. Guizac's proposal to sponsor his cousin from a European displaced persons camp to marry Somo, one of her black farmhands, viewing it as an intolerable breach of social boundaries on her property.^[34]^[12] She insists on firing Guizac despite the priest's remonstrations that her stance reflects hardness of heart, emphasizing her lack of responsibility for his family's plight and her need to "draw the line somewhere."^[34]^[4] Guizac pleads desperately with Mrs. McIntyre to allow him to remain, offering to work without wages and highlighting his contributions to the farm's efficiency, but she remains resolute, threatening to involve authorities if he persists in his plans.^[12]^[34] The following day, while Guizac repairs a malfunctioning tractor under the supervision of the resentful Somo—who harbors envy toward Guizac's skills and status—the vehicle slips from its blocks due to improper securing, overturning and crushing Guizac fatally beneath its weight.^[4]^[12] From her porch, Mrs. McIntyre witnesses the accident in detached horror, initially relieved by the resolution of her labor tensions, but her gaze shifts to the approaching peacock, whose fanned tail reveals "a hundred eyes" seeming fixed upon her, prompting a profound, disorienting realization of her own complicity in displacement and moral isolation.^[34]^[4] This culminates in her collapse from a stroke, rendering her bedridden and dependent on the very farmhands she once dominated, thus inverting her position and underscoring themes of unforeseen reversal.^[12]^[34] Guizac's death expatriates him permanently from the community, while Mrs. McIntyre's infirmity displaces her authority, leaving the farm in a state of uneasy stasis under Astor and Somo's care.^[4]^[12]

Characters and Motivations

Mrs. McIntyre's Hypocrisy and Pride

Mrs. McIntyre, the widowed operator of a struggling Georgia dairy farm, exhibits profound pride rooted in her perceived mastery over her property and its history. She frequently invokes her thirty years of management and her grandfather's foundational role in establishing the estate, positioning herself as the guardian of a self-sufficient legacy that demands her unquestioned authority.^[17] This pride manifests in declarations such as "This is my place... I say who will come here and who won’t," underscoring her view of the farm as an extension of her personal dominion, where all laborers are mere "extra" appendages.^[17] ^[12] Her insistence on preserving artifacts like her grandfather's chair and graveyard further symbolizes this attachment to familial order, which she prioritizes over pragmatic changes that might dilute her control.^[17] This pride intertwines with hypocrisy, as Mrs. McIntyre preaches a Christian ethic of charity and hard work while applying standards selectively to preserve her social and racial hierarchies. She laments the laziness of her black and white farmhands—generalizing them as irresponsible and thieving—yet overlooks infractions like Sulk's theft to avoid disrupting the status quo, revealing a tolerance born of expediency rather than principle.^[12] Initially hailing Mr. Guizac, the Polish refugee, as her "salvation" for his unmatched efficiency in modernizing the farm, she exploits his labor to boost productivity and dismiss inefficient workers like the Shortleys, only to reverse course when his proposal to arrange a marriage between his niece and the black worker Sulk threatens her racial prejudices.^[34] ^[12] Her claim to the priest that she mirrors Christ's mercy in accepting "strays" like Guizac contrasts sharply with her refusal to assume responsibility for "all the extra people in the world," culminating in her decision to evict him despite his value to the farm's viability.^[34] ^[17] Ultimately, Mrs. McIntyre's hypocrisy peaks in her complicity during Guizac's fatal accident, where she stands silent alongside resentful workers as the tractor crushes him, prioritizing her prideful autonomy over any redemptive obligation.^[34] This act exposes the hollowness of her self-proclaimed practicality—"I'm not theological, I'm practical"—which serves as a veneer for egotism, allowing her to displace others while evading self-examination.^[12] Her eventual reduction of Christ to "just another D.P." in conversation with the priest highlights a resistance to spiritual displacement that would challenge her entrenched worldview.^[12] Through these traits, Mrs. McIntyre illustrates a character whose pride blinds her to the inefficiencies of her own rule, fostering hypocrisy that sustains isolation amid evident farm decay.^[4]

Mr. Guizac as Outsider and Catalyst

Mr. Guizac, referred to throughout the narrative as the Displaced Person, is a Polish Catholic refugee who arrives at Mrs. McIntyre's dairy farm in rural Georgia shortly after World War II, resettled through the efforts of the local priest, Father Flynn, under the U.S. Displaced Persons Act of 1948. Having endured Nazi labor camps and lost family members in the European conflict, Guizac represents profound physical and cultural dislocation, transplanting his family—including his wife and young daughter—into a Southern agrarian setting rigidly structured by race, class, and tradition. His heavy accent, European mannerisms, and unyielding diligence immediately alienate the farm's inhabitants, who perceive him as an existential threat to their established order; Mrs. Shortley, for instance, derogatorily labels his family "Gobblehooks" and imagines them as carriers of foreign "murderous ways" and diseases, reflecting broader postwar American anxieties about immigration and unfamiliar labor.^[30]^[36] As a catalyst, Guizac disrupts the farm's stagnation by leveraging his expertise as a mechanic, carpenter, and mason to repair equipment and introduce mechanization, such as acquiring a tractor that enhances productivity but exposes the inefficiencies and idleness of the existing workers—Astor and Sulk, the black farmhands, and the Shortleys. His efficiency leads to the Shortleys' dismissal after Mrs. McIntyre recognizes his superior value, igniting resentments that fester into active sabotage. The pivotal conflict arises when Guizac proposes importing his niece from a displaced persons camp in Germany to marry Sulk, a pragmatic scheme to circumvent immigration restrictions and demonstrate his disregard for local racial hierarchies; this suggestion, devoid of malice but oblivious to Southern taboos against miscegenation, horrifies Mrs. McIntyre and unites disparate antagonists against him, accelerating the narrative's descent into violence.^[4]^[36] Guizac's outsider status amplifies his catalytic effect, as his lack of inherited prejudices allows him to pursue progress and charity without the community's self-serving distortions, ultimately resulting in his death via a tractor "accident" engineered by Mr. Shortley under Mrs. McIntyre's direction on December 15, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. This rejection underscores his role in unmasking the spiritual emptiness of those around him, positioning him as an unwitting agent of confrontation with moral failings. Literary analyses portray Guizac as the story's most affirmative figure, embodying immigrant determination and embodying a Christ-like intrusion that demands accountability but meets expulsion, thereby illuminating the perils of insularity in mid-20th-century American society.^[4]^[30]

The Farmhands' Resentment and Envy

In Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person," the black farmhands Astor and Sulk embody a entrenched complacency disrupted by the arrival of Mr. Guizac, the Polish refugee whose diligence exposes their inefficiencies. Astor, an elderly worker in his eighties who has labored on the McIntyre farm since the time of Mrs. McIntyre's late first husband, the Judge, represents a passive adherence to the farm's decaying traditions, while Sulk, a younger hand involved in illicit activities like operating a moonshine still with Mr. Shortley, displays more active sullenness.^[12]^[35] Their resentment toward Guizac arises primarily from his superior work ethic and mechanical aptitude, which Mrs. McIntyre leverages to pressure them, threatening replacement if they fail to match his output.^[7] Guizac's efficiencies—such as repairing broken machinery, introducing a tractor for plowing, and optimizing dairy operations—contrast sharply with the farmhands' habitual underperformance, fostering envy of his skills and the resulting favoritism he receives. For instance, Sulk's attempt to steal a turkey is thwarted when Guizac catches him in the act, highlighting the refugee's vigilance and prompting Mrs. McIntyre to intervene leniently, yet underscoring the farmhands' vulnerability under heightened scrutiny.^[12] This dynamic intensifies when Guizac proposes a pragmatic arrangement to Sulk: funding half the travel fare for Guizac's displaced cousin from Europe in exchange for marriage, aiming to secure her immigration but igniting Mrs. McIntyre's outrage over perceived racial impropriety. Sulk's participation in this scheme, kept secret from the outset, reveals not only opportunistic self-interest but also underlying resentment toward Guizac's resourcefulness in navigating displacement, which indirectly threatens the farmhands' insulated status quo.^[35]^[37] The farmhands' envy culminates in passive complicity during the story's climax, where Sulk witnesses the fatal tractor accident that kills Guizac—caused by Mrs. McIntyre's deliberate collision—without intervening, mirroring Astor's absence from the scene and their collective failure to adapt or compete. Astor, though less overtly antagonistic and noted for his affinity for the farm's symbolic peacocks, shares in this inertia, viewing the encroaching changes through a lens of resigned observation rather than emulation.^[12]^[38] This resentment, rooted in the disruption of unearned privileges by meritocratic labor, underscores the farmhands' alignment with the story's broader critique of human resistance to progress and accountability, as Guizac's expulsion restores their precarious ease at the cost of the farm's potential renewal.^[7]

Themes and Symbolism

Pride, Prejudice, and Spiritual Displacement

In Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person," pride manifests primarily in Mrs. McIntyre's rigid adherence to her perceived autonomy and economic efficiency, which blinds her to the moral imperatives of charity. As a Protestant landowner in rural Georgia during the late 1940s, she initially welcomes Mr. Guizac, a Polish refugee displaced by World War II, solely for his mechanical skills and tireless work ethic that modernize her failing dairy farm, including the installation of a tractor on November 15, 1947, in the story's timeline. However, her pride curdles into resentment when Guizac's productivity disrupts her control, prompting her to declare, "He'll have to go," after he proposes relocating his family, revealing her unwillingness to extend true Christian hospitality beyond utility.^[37] This pride aligns with O'Connor's portrayal of Southern self-reliance as a barrier to grace, where characters prioritize personal dominion over communal or divine order.^[2] Prejudice compounds this pride, evident in the collective xenophobia of the farmhands and Mrs. McIntyre toward Guizac as an ethnic and cultural outsider. Mrs. Shortley, the domineering wife of a tenant worker, derogatorily labels the Guizacs "Peenots" and envisions them as racially inferior invaders who will dilute the farm's established hierarchies, including her unfounded fears of miscegenation when Guizac suggests his niece marry a black laborer. This prejudice stems from post-war nativism, where the locals perceive the European refugee—arrived via Catholic resettlement efforts in 1948—as a threat to their entrenched class and racial privileges, despite his superior diligence compared to the indolent black workers Astor and Sulk. O'Connor depicts such bias not as mere social friction but as a willful ignorance of human dignity, echoing broader Southern attitudes toward immigrants amid the era's 250,000 displaced persons resettled in the U.S. by 1950.^[4]^[2] These intertwined flaws culminate in spiritual displacement, wherein the characters' rejection of Guizac—who embodies the intrusive Incarnation, displacing human complacency much as Christ disrupts sin—renders them eternally rootless. Theological analyses interpret Guizac's fatal tractor accident, engineered through the locals' complicity on a specific afternoon in the story's third part, as the violent expulsion of grace, leaving Mrs. McIntyre paralyzed by stroke, the Shortleys evicted, and the farm in decay under incompetent hands. O'Connor, drawing from Catholic doctrine, probes divine charity as demanding displacement from self-centered worlds; in a letter to correspondent Betty Hester circa 1955, she referenced including a prayer to Saint Raphael to underscore themes of mismatched unions and failed providence, highlighting how prejudice severs souls from redemptive order. Thus, the narrative inverts the title: the physical displaced person finds purpose in labor, while the prejudiced displacers achieve only existential exile, their pride ensuring no true home in the spiritual realm.^[2]^[30]^[37]

Catholic Grace Amid Human Failure

In Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person," Catholic grace manifests as a disruptive force penetrating the moral and spiritual failures of the characters, aligning with the author's stated aim to depict divine intervention in a world dominated by human sin. O'Connor described her fiction as illustrating "the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil," where grace operates not through gentle persuasion but through confrontation with pride, prejudice, and self-deception.^[39] This theme is embodied in the Polish refugee Mr. Guizac, whose Catholic piety—evident in his daily Mass attendance and recitation of the Rosary—contrasts sharply with the spiritual torpor of the Georgia farm community, highlighting how grace exposes and challenges ingrained vices like racism and envy without guaranteeing acceptance.^[29] The human failures are stark: Mrs. McIntyre's initial tolerance of Guizac erodes into expulsion driven by her hypocritical blend of Protestant work ethic and unspoken racial animus, culminating in her paralytic stroke as a consequence of rejecting the improvements he brings; meanwhile, the farmhands Astor and Sulk respond with murderous resentment, their idleness and bitterness underscoring a willful displacement from moral order. Yet grace persists through ecclesial mediation, as the Catholic priest repeatedly intervenes to place the refugee family, symbolizing the Church's role in extending divine charity amid secular resistance. O'Connor deliberately incorporated Catholic sacramental references, such as a prayer to Saint Rose of Lima, to emphasize this irruption of supernatural reality into profane failure, as she explained in correspondence that such details reinforced the story's theological probing of Christian love distorted by human limitation.^[30]^[2] Ultimately, the narrative affirms Catholic doctrine that grace suffices despite free will's frequent rejection, with Guizac's tragic death—engineered by the farmhands and tacitly enabled by Mrs. McIntyre—serving as a catalyst for ironic displacement: the natives become spiritually uprooted in their own domain, trapped in decay, while the peacock's final scream evokes a Christological presence judging the scene. Literary analyses interpret this as O'Connor's critique of postwar American complacency, where grace demands prophetic upheaval rather than accommodation, refusing to sentimentalize redemption.^[40] O'Connor herself viewed the story as imperfect in execution but theologically resonant, revising it across three versions from 1954 to 1957 to heighten these elements of divine realism over mere social commentary.^[30] This portrayal privileges causal realism: human pride causally precipitates downfall, yet grace's efficacy remains independent, offering potential restoration only to those open to it.

The Peacock and Farm as Symbols of Order and Decay

In Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person," the peacock embodies divine order and eternal beauty, rooted in Christian symbolism associating it with Christ, the Resurrection, and incorruptibility. O'Connor, who raised peafowl on her Georgia farm, drew from medieval iconography where the peacock's iridescent tail—adorned with "eyes" evoking providence—signifies the watchful gaze of the Church and immortality, as its flesh reputedly resists decay.^[31]^[41] The bird's dramatic display, described as "tiers of small pregnant suns" floating in a haze, heralds transcendent reality amid mundane strife, with the priest exclaiming it foreshadows Christ's return: "Christ will come like that!"^[42] Characters' responses reveal spiritual discernment: the priest and farmhand Astor attend to it with reverence, while Mrs. McIntyre dismisses it as "another mouth to feed" and Mrs. Shortley overlooks it entirely, underscoring their entanglement in worldly concerns over divine grace.^[41]^[43] The farm, by contrast, symbolizes human-ordered decay, a dilapidated Southern estate marred by inefficiency, racial hierarchies, and moral complacency before Mr. Guizac's arrival. Initially rundown with malfunctioning machinery and lazy labor, it reflects entrenched prejudice and spiritual stagnation, where inhabitants like the Shortleys exploit rather than steward the land.^[12] Guizac's interventions—repairing tractors, cleaning barns, and introducing mechanized efficiency—impose a temporal order, yet provoke resentment, culminating in his fatal accident and the farm's subsequent ruin as Mrs. McIntyre sells it in despair.^[41] This trajectory illustrates O'Connor's critique of anthropocentric systems vulnerable to sin's entropy, paralleling the peacock's neglect: its population dwindles from over twenty to three under Mrs. McIntyre's utilitarian oversight, mirroring the estate's broader moral and physical erosion.^[43] Together, these symbols juxtapose immutable divine order against fragile human constructs, with the peacock's screams punctuating moments of judgment—such as Mrs. Shortley's stroke and Guizac's death—emphasizing grace's intrusion into a decaying world resistant to redemption.^[42] O'Connor's Catholic vision posits that true order endures beyond temporal displacements, as the peacock persists as a "king" indifferent to the farm's collapse.^[44]

Critical Reception and Interpretations

Early Reviews and O'Connor's Intent

"The Displaced Person" first appeared in a truncated form in the Sewanee Review in October 1954, prior to its revised and expanded publication within Flannery O'Connor's short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories on May 20, 1955.^[12] Early critical attention to the collection, including the story, emphasized O'Connor's grotesque style and Southern settings, with reviewers in Catholic outlets such as Commonweal describing "The Displaced Person" as a "marvelous parable" that illuminated moral failings amid postwar displacement.^[45] These initial responses, amid broader reception to the volume that sold modestly but garnered notice for its unflinching portrayals of human sinfulness, positioned the narrative as a critique of nativism and racial hierarchies in the rural South, reflecting anxieties over European refugees resettled under programs like the Displaced Persons Act of 1948.^[13] O'Connor's authorial intent centered on theological motifs drawn from her Catholic worldview, portraying Mr. Guizac—the Polish refugee—as a deliberate Christ figure whose industrious intrusion exposes and disrupts the entrenched pride, racism, and spiritual complacency of the farm's inhabitants.^[2] In correspondence, she articulated the story's aim to depict grace irrupting violently into a fallen order, where Guizac's death serves as sacrificial judgment that "destroy the place, which was evil," while propelling Mrs. McIntyre toward redemption through her subsequent stroke and isolation.^[46] This aligns with O'Connor's broader fiction, which privileges sudden, often brutal confrontations with divine reality over gradual moral improvement, as evidenced in her essays like those in Mystery and Manners (1969), though she applied similar principles prospectively to this work.^[5] Despite this framework, O'Connor privately deemed the story a failure, confiding in a November 25, 1955, letter to her correspondent "A." (Betty Hester) that it inadequately realized her objectives, particularly in balancing the prophetic critique of social displacement with unambiguous conveyance of redemptive possibility.^[33]^[30] This self-assessment, rare for O'Connor amid her typical defense of her narratives' intentional distortions, underscores her commitment to precision in embodying Catholic doctrines of original sin and unmerited grace, even as early interpreters focused more on its social realism than its sacramental undertones.^[40]

Debates on Race, Class, and Religion

Critics have debated the story's treatment of race as a critique of Southern prejudice, noting how both white characters like the Shortleys and black farmhands such as Sulk and Astor unite in resentment against the Polish refugee Mr. Guizac, whose efficiency and foreignness threaten their positions, culminating in his death by tractor after they free it.^[4] This collective xenophobia and sabotage underscore prejudice as a universal sin rooted in self-preservation, yet O'Connor's correspondence reveals her own segregationist views, including fears that integration would promote miscegenation, as echoed in the characters' horror at Guizac's proposal to marry his niece to Sulk, prompting arguments that the narrative reinforces rather than solely condemns racial hierarchies.^[47] Some interpretations highlight the story's post-World War II context, where Guizac's displacement from Nazi camps parallels critiques of American nativism, but others contend it reflects O'Connor's belief in gradual social change over forced equality, given her 1963 letter stating that "the Negroes have to learn their place" amid civil rights upheavals.^[36] Class tensions in the story revolve around Guizac's superior work ethic displacing lazy or inefficient laborers, including the white Shortleys and black hands, who prioritize job security over productivity; this has sparked interpretations viewing the farm as a microcosm of economic disruption by competent outsiders, challenging entrenched entitlements in a rural hierarchy where Mrs. McIntyre exploits cheap labor but resists true meritocracy when it erodes her control.^[37] Debates persist on whether O'Connor endorses a causal realism of displacement—where industriousness naturally supplants incompetence—or critiques class envy as a barrier to progress, as the farmhands' sabotage preserves a decaying status quo at the cost of innovation and order.^[4] Religious dimensions intersect these debates through Catholic motifs, such as the priest importing Guizac as an agent of grace and the peacock symbolizing Christ's beauty amid human ugliness, positioning displacement as spiritual homelessness that demands humility; however, characters' rejection of this—Mrs. McIntyre's pragmatic bigotry and the Shortleys' self-deified resentment—invites critique of hypocritical Christianity complicit in racial and class violence.^[4] Some scholars argue O'Connor's orthodox theology universalizes sin to transcend social specifics, portraying prejudice as pride blocking divine charity, while others fault it for downplaying systemic racism and class exploitation under a guise of eternal verities, especially given her letters prioritizing spiritual over temporal justice.^[47] These interpretations emphasize the story's 1955 publication amid rising immigration and desegregation debates, where religious displacement mirrors empirical failures of integration without prescribing policy solutions.^[13]

Modern Reassessments and Controversies

In the 2020s, Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person" has undergone reassessment amid broader scrutiny of her racial views, prompted by the 2020 publication of expanded correspondence revealing casual racist language, such as epithets used in private letters to friends.^[48] This led to institutional actions, including the removal of her name from a Loyola University award in July 2020 and debates over whether her personal prejudices undermine the story's critique of Southern pride and exclusion.^[48] Scholars like Paul Elie have questioned the separation of O'Connor's biography from her fiction, arguing that her ambivalence toward racial integration—evident in the story's depiction of mutual resentment between black farmhands and the Polish refugee Mr. Guizac—reflects unexamined cultural assumptions rather than deliberate satire.^[48] However, defenders, including Catholic commentators, maintain that the narrative's portrayal of all characters' rejection of the industrious outsider aligns with O'Connor's theological intent to expose universal spiritual displacement, not endorse racial hierarchies.^[49] Racial interpretations remain contested, with some recent analyses framing the story as a critique of white supremacist nostalgia and authoritarian rigidity. In a 2021 study, the Shortley family's paranoia over miscegenation—sparked by Guizac's suggestion of marrying his cousin to a black worker—and Mrs. McIntyre's longing for a hierarchical past are read as indictments of post-Holocaust Southern resistance to demographic change, drawing on Theodor Adorno's authoritarian personality theory to highlight intolerance toward the "other."^[50] Conversely, critics note the black characters' depiction as envious and complicit in Guizac's demise, interpreting this as O'Connor's reinforcement of stereotypes of black inferiority, which complicates claims of her racial progressivism despite her public support for desegregation in the 1950s. These readings reflect academic tensions, where left-leaning scholarship often emphasizes O'Connor's shortcomings over her fiction's first-principles exposure of pride as the root of prejudice, potentially overlooking the story's 1955 context of displaced persons programs admitting over 400,000 European refugees to the U.S. amid Cold War anti-communism.^[13] Theological reassessments have repurposed the story for contemporary refugee discourses, positioning Mr. Guizac as a Christ-figure whose displacement mirrors Jesus' flight to Egypt in Matthew 2:13–15. A 2023 analysis argues this typology urges Christians to view refugees not as threats but as embodiments of ecclesial exile, challenging nativist exclusions while cautioning against romanticizing trauma or fostering insular "persecution" identities.^[51] Such interpretations counterbalance racial controversies by stressing the narrative's Catholic realism—grace intruding on fallen orders—over biographical flaws, though they acknowledge risks of selective reading amid polarized immigration debates, as seen in invocations of the story against 2020s U.S. border policies.^[49]^[51]

Adaptations and Cultural Impact

Stage and Audio Adaptations

A stage adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person," incorporated into a two-act play by Cecil Dawkins drawing from multiple O'Connor stories, received O'Connor's permission and incorporated her input during development.^[52]^[53] The production premiered on December 29, 1966, at the American Place Theatre in New York City, presented at the Theater at St. Clement's Church as part of the company's off-Broadway season focused on new American works.^[54]^[55]^[56] No major audio dramatizations or radio adaptations of the story have been produced, though narrated audiobook versions of the original text exist in collections of O'Connor's works.^[57]

Influence on Southern Gothic and Broader Literature

Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person," first published in 1955, exemplifies and advanced Southern Gothic conventions through its portrayal of a decaying Georgia farmstead invaded by a Polish refugee family, highlighting grotesque human failings amid rural isolation and economic stagnation. The story's use of distorted characters—such as the bigoted farmhand Astor and the prideful widow Mrs. McIntyre—alongside symbols of disorder like malfunctioning machinery and predatory birds, underscores the genre's emphasis on moral aberration and environmental entropy, distinguishing O'Connor's Catholic-inflected grotesquerie from secular predecessors like William Faulkner.^[4] This integration of theological displacement with physical violence, culminating in the immigrant's fatal accident on December 1949-inspired events, reinforced Southern Gothic's capacity to probe post-World War II upheavals, including refugee resettlement and Southern agrarian decline.^[12] The narrative's influence extended the genre's exploration of outsider intrusion as a catalyst for communal unraveling, influencing later depictions of racial, class, and cultural frictions in Southern settings by later authors who adopted O'Connor's stark realism to critique insularity. For instance, contemporary Southern Gothic writers like Jesmyn Ward have drawn on such motifs of alienation and reckoning in works addressing historical trauma and social hierarchies, echoing the story's unflinching exposure of prejudice without redemptive secular illusions.^[58] O'Connor's technique in the story—employing abrupt, ironic violence to force spiritual confrontation—helped evolve the genre beyond mere regional eccentricity toward a broader indictment of human resistance to grace, as evidenced in her enduring role in post-1940s Southern fiction.^[59] Beyond Southern Gothic, "The Displaced Person" contributed to American short fiction's treatment of displacement as a universal emblem of existential and moral homelessness, paralleling mid-20th-century themes in immigrant narratives and Cold War-era alienation literature. Its portrayal of failed integration—rooted in verifiable 1940s refugee programs like those resettling European displaced persons on Southern farms—anticipated broader literary examinations of cultural collision and identity loss in works by authors grappling with globalization's disruptions.^[6] O'Connor's insistence on grace amid prejudice influenced Catholic literary traditions, where grotesque realism serves redemptive ends, impacting writers who blend faith with secular critique in exploring human limits.^[60]

References

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[PDF] The Displaced Person - WordPress.com
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[PDF] ANALYSIS “The Displaced Person” (1955) Flannery O'Connor (1925 ...
“In 'The Displaced Person,' a story published in 1954, a refugee from Poland is hired to work on a woman's dairy farm. Although he speaks in apparent gibberish, ...
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Analysis of Flannery O'Connor's The Displaced Person
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The Prophetic Intent of O'Connor's "The Displaced Person" - jstor
"The Displaced Person" contains such an exploration. Three years after her address at Notre Dame, O'Connor more completely detailed the social and economic ...
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Cold War Liberalism and Flannery O'Connor's “The Displaced Person”
Dec 8, 2017 · In O'Connor's story, the Displaced Person is perceived by the farm workers as disrupting the local, rural order. This disruption fuses the ...
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Annotations on History and Society in Flannery O'Connor's ... - jstor
Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person". Leonard M. Olschner. For Ulrich Halfmann. History and seeming timelessness are the antagonistic forces which—on a ...
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Flannery O'Connor Summer Reading Club, Week 4--"The Displaced ...
Jun 25, 2012 · In the summer of 1953, Flannery O'Connor's mother Regina hired a new farm laborer named Matysiak. He and his family moved into one of the ...
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Southern Expressions - America Magazine
Mar 30, 2009 · O'Connor, for example, partially based her story “The Displaced Person” (1954) on a Polish family, the Matysiaks, who arrived at Andalusia ...
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Flannery O'Connor, The Holocaust, and the Evolution of Catholicism
Aug 18, 2010 · In her letter to Giroux on November 15, 1954, she writes: “I have included only the long version of 'The Displaced Person' but if you don't like ...
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[PDF] flannery o'connor's “displaced person” - ShareOK
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### Summary of Part One of "The Displaced Person" by Flannery O'Connor
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[PDF] A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND AND OTHER STORIES
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The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 - Truman Library Institute
Apr 29, 2019 · On June 25, 1948, Harry S. Truman signed the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. In its most basic sense, the act would assist in the ...
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-An Act to authorize for a limited period of time the admission into the United States of certain European displaced persons for permanent residence, and for ...
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The act required people to receive medical clearance and secure sponsorship from an American citizen in order to come to the US.
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The 1948 Act discriminated against Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and imprinted Nazi racial laws and ideology upon U.S. law.<|separator|>
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United States Immigration and Refugee Law, 1921-1980
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Flannery O'Connor's Catholicism - Simply Catholic
Mar 25, 2019 · In the story “The Displaced Person,” O'Connor reflects the Catholic commitment to social justice and concern for refugees. In the stories ...
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Flannery O'Connor and the Peacock - jstor
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[32]
17 January (1956): Flannery O'Connor to Betty Hester
The prayer had some imagery in it that I took over and put in “The Displaced Person”—the business about Mrs, Shortley looking on the frontiers of her true ...
[33]
The Displaced Person What's Up With the Ending? | Shmoop
In her November 25, 1955 letter to Betty Hester, Flannery O'Connor discussed her goals in writing "The Displaced Person" and her belief that she failed in ...
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Flannery O'Connor's Stories “The Displaced Person” Summary and ...
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The Displaced Person Summary - SuperSummary
“The Displaced Person” explores themes of prejudice and charity. The novella, and the collection of which it forms a part, form a key part of Flannery O' ...
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O'Connor's underappreciated story “The Displaced Person” is a valuable read given the country's increasing xenophobia.Missing: revisions | Show results with:revisions
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Astor in The Displaced Person Character Analysis | Shmoop
Character Analysis. Astor is an old black man who works for Mrs. Shortley. He's been on the farm since the days of Mrs. McIntyre's first husband, the Judge.Missing: SS | Show results with:SS
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Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) - Georgetown University
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[41]
Symbolism in the Stories of Flannery O'Connor - Causeway Lit
O'Connor uses the peacock as a symbol of Christ, and the main characters' reactions to the peacock serve to contrast the characters' attitudes and beliefs.
[42]
The Peacock's Tail - Comment Magazine
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[43]
The Peacock in The Displaced Person - Shmoop
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Flannery's Peacocks: “King Of The Birds” Run Amok - Patheos
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[45]
Flannery O'Connor and the U. S. Catholic Press - jstor
... The Displaced Person' is a marvelous parable, not one ... But without much support from theory or from the book itself, this review sounds more like apologetics ...
[46]
From Manners to Mystery: Flannery O'Connor's Titles - jstor
As O'Connor notes: "the displaced person did accomplish a kind of redemption in that he destroyed the place, which was evil, and set Mrs. Mclntyre on the ...
[47]
Miscegenation and Communism in Flannery O'Connor's “The ... - jstor
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor
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Jesus Was a Refugee: Unpacking the Theological Implications
Jul 27, 2023 · '. Flannery O'Connor, 'The Displaced Person'1. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said ...
[52]
University of Tulsa - Postmarked Milledgeville
O'Connor eventually granted Dawkins permission to adapt her story “The Displaced Person” into a play, which opened at the American Place Theatre in New York in ...
[53]
Two Classics: Cecil Dawkins and Cynthia Homire
In 1966 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Cecil's play, The Displaced Person, based on stories by O'Connor (with O'Connor's permission and input) was then ...
[54]
archives.nypl.org -- American Place Theatre Company records
The Displaced Person. By Cecil Dawkins. Based on the stories of Flannery O'Connor. b. 142 f. 4-5. The Displaced Person. b. 39 f. 6-7. La Turista. By Sam Shepard.
[55]
Remembering Cecil Dawkins, 1927-2019 - jstor
The Displaced Person. By Cecil Dawkins. From stories by Flannery O'Connor. American Place Theater, New York. 29 Dec. 1966. Performance. O'Connor, Flannery.
[56]
The Displaced Person at Theater at St. Clement's Church 1966-1967
The American Place Theatre presents The Displaced Person by Cecil Dawkins (adaptation) an adaptation of the book by Flannery O'Connor (author)
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https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/good-man-is-hard-to-find-and-other-stories/568981
[58]
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The “forever” of Flannery O'Connor — the lasting influence of a ...
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[60]
Flannery at 100—and Forever - Modern Age – A Conservative Review
Mar 17, 2025 · ... The Displaced Person,” one of O'Connor's darkest stories, in which the landowner is complicit with the distrustful and resentful native farm ...