Monday, September 22, 2008
Paranoia in The D.P.
What stood out in my mind while and after reading The Displaced Person was Mrs. Shortley's idea of herself. She liked portraying herself as a strong person, loving the feeling of putting other people down. Despite her best efforts, I found her to be a completely insecure, paranoid individual. She confided in her husband, most likely for his approval of her insecurities and theories, yet she couldn't keep her mouth shut around the others. The one section of the story that really stood out for me was when Mr. and Mrs. Shortley were in bed, and Mr. Shortley was pretending to be a "dead man." While Mrs. Shortley had an incredibly low opinion of black people, she confessed, "I aim to take up for the niggers when the time comes." She talks in circles, in an attempt to find reason in her fear of "them poles." Mrs. Shortley's constant paranoia branches from the threat that they have more knowledge than they let on. My question is...if she views herself as being so much better than them, speaking poorly of them behind their backs, then what is she afraid of? And why would she even speak of her fears out loud? It seems that with her pride, she would keep these emotions bottled up.
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I think that Mrs. Shortley is incredibly afraid of the unknown and inevitable: death. These foreign people seem to hold the key to death, in that they were completely submersed by dying and the dead, and therefore understand it better than Mrs. Shortley ever will. Therefore, Mrs. Shortley seems to view these people as Death's Messengers, and she fears that the arrival of these people is announcing her own death. Furthermore, Mrs. Shortley asserts her fears to others in order to gain some sort of reassurance; to know that other people feel the same way and that she is sane, but more importantly, that she is RIGHT to feel the way she does towards them. Her fears mostly go unassured however, making her paranoia greater until she is no longer in contact with reality as it "should" be perceived.
I think Mrs. Shortley is afraid of being replaced. A new worker is taken on and therefore she feels threatened. She feels that her ground is being tread on and I think anyone in her situation would feel a little bit paranoid. Mrs. McIntyre says, “At last, I’ve got somebody I can depend on. For years I’ve been fooling with sorry people” (O’Connor 293). If I were Mrs. Shortley and I heard this I would be offended and I would also feel as though my position were being threatened.
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