The Displaced Person from a Sociological Standpoint

I cannot help but think that O’Connor’s sole purpose for “The Displaced Person” was to simply shock American culture into awareness of its own intolerance toward the victims of the Holocaust. She most definitely suceeded into shocking into awareness of how American culture pervertedly percieved the horrors of the war. In her writing however, O'Connor never mentions the words ‘concentration,’ ‘Hitler,’ or ‘Nazi’ but the absence of those key words only heightens the importance of the subtext in sentences like “I’m a logical practical woman and there are no ovens here and no camps and no Christ Our Lord.” Obviously Mrs. McIntyre alludes to the mass murder of the people in Europe, but her own misconstrued notions of right and wrong persuade her to believe Mr. Guizac deserves nothing—not even the chance to make a living after fleeing his home. She believes she solidifies the true system of America when she refuses to allow her black worker to send for Mr. Guizac’s cousin, and rebukes him saying “I cannot understand how a man who calls himself a Christian could bring over a poor innocent girl over here and marry her to something like that.” She calls her black worker a “that.” As if he were less than human.” Forget that this young woman has been in a “camp” for three years. Forget that she may be starving and dying. It would not be worth it to Mrs. McIntyre to derail her reputation and allow a mixed marriage to occur under her nose. Racism, again, championed over basic moral reasoning. She should let this young woman suffer, obviously, because it would be better to die than to marry a black person? What?! The simply ironies in this story were bitter and sickening. Was the American mindset really too proud to welcome these displaced families—these suffering families uprooted from their homes and torn away from their loved ones— with open arms? Did Americans refuse to believe in moral obligation? Is the reason O’Connor wrote this story to shake our society into recognizing that we fit the mold of either Mrs. Shortley, a person motivated by greed and ignorance, or Mrs. McIntyre, a person motivated by greed, pride, and dangerous ideology. I really do not even know what to write about after reading this story. I feel such animosity toward these women because I know that women in my own country harbored these xenophobic fears toward people who truly had nothing. Nothing. The nonchalant way Mrs. McIntyre and Mrs. Shortley women speak of these refugees—“the Pole and his family were getting fat; she pointed out that the hollows had come out of their cheeks” or “every time Mr. Guizac smiled, Europe stretched out in Mrs. Shortley’s imagination, mysterious and evil, the devil’s experiment station.” Mrs. Shortley claimed “Mr. Guizac came from the devil”, and that unlike him, she was one of God’s chosen ones with a “special part in the plan because she was strong.” Her so-called strength eventually gave her a stroke. Her husband blamed her death on their devil-contaminated Poles. In contrast, Mrs. McIntyre initially claims that Mr. Guizac is her “salvation” and again, in her conversation with the Priest, Mr. Guizac is recognized as a Christ figure who “didn’t have to come in the first place” but “came to redeem us.” Mr. Guizac and his family worked only to find a home with Mrs. McIntyre, but she rejected him and his tireless, perfect work. She rejected perfection, and in a sense, rejected Christ. Again, this piece seems to serve entirely as O’Connor’s social commentary of America’s hypocrisy. We say we believe in freedom, but we reject the oppressed. We say we believe in a loving Christian God, but we reject his principles.

The religious overtones in this story seemed to saturate every part of the story. The peackock stood as another metaphor for Christ. Mrs. Shortley prophesized “the children of wicked nations with be butchered,” foreshadowing the death of Mr. Guizac. Both Mrs. Shortley and Mrs. McIntyre claim to be Christian women but condemn the priest as one who “comes to destroy.” The women use religion to appease the guilt they would otherwise have felt toward the Polish family. If I had more time, I would dig more into the religious themes of this short story.