The religious aspects of O'Conner's stories are always fascinating to me. They seem to reinforce the moral dilemas her characters face which, above all, tend to be one in which they are found judging others. This places us, as readers, in a precarious position as we find ourselves to be in a posture of judgement. We may not even relate to that character in many cases, none-the-less, we find we have , if nothing else, that posture of judgment in common. It can be uncomfortable, yet at the same time we are allowed to reject a character's course of action and can still witness and evaluate the outcome of that character's wrong course of decisions.
In The Displaced Person, the religious aspect centers around Christ. It is not so much a story about the Polish stranger as a story about the people around him. Likewise, we can not relate Mr. Guizac so much to Christ as we can the people around him to the people who surrounded Christ and killed him, or sacrificed him. Mrs. Shortly, Mrs. McIntyre and Mr. Shortly each, in turn, feel threatened in some way by Mr. Guizac and create him as "the other." If he does represent, as someone said in class, the lowest class level to these characters, he holds the positon Christ condesended to upon earth, a position least threatening and is able, by the end of the story, to rise above them all (moraly speaking). All that is left to become so threatening are those elements of character which are moral in nature. More importantly is that these people don't see Mr. Guizac as a godsend or as their salvation (even if it is on a monatary or physical level), but rather as a threat. At the end of the story he is the one who is unblemished and is killed by the others who have conspired against him: "She had felt her eyes and Mr. Shortley's eyes and the Negro's eyes come together in one look that froze them in collusion forever" (p.326). These people cannot escape their sacrifice of an innocent man and will face the consequences of becoming displaced from the land not unlike the Jews.
The peacock becomes another one of O'Conner's vehicles of vision for us as it reveals the vision of her characters. O'Conner's narrator tells us "The peacock stood still as if he had just come down from some sundrenched height to be a vision for them all" (p.289). What the peacock does for us as readers is allow us to see more clearly what the characters in the story see or are blind too. As the peacock follows Mrs. Shortly around, remaining behind her, yet confronting her at every turn, we become aware of her failure to see, her shortsightedness. Further, her perspective reduces something of bueaty and grandure to "nothing but a peachicken." This is what she does as well to Mr. Guizac, recognizing him as nothing of worth and rather contemptuous. She can't see who he really is though he is right in front of her: ". . . her unseeing eyes directly in front of the peacocks's tail. He had jumped into the tree and his tail hung in front of her . . . [but] She was having an inner vision instead. She was seeing the ten million billion of them pushing their way into new places over here. . . " (p.290-91) Regardless of his worth, Mrs. Shortly cannot see it, she can only see what she has invisioned as a threat. On the other hand, the priest sees something else. He recognizes a value in the peacock, "Christ will come like that!" As "nothing but a peachicken" yet "trasfigured" (only after his death) into something else. And what of "the transfigureation" the priest sees when the peacock opens it's tail. Mr. Guizac seems transfigured or made over twice. Once by each of the characters when they create him as the other or make him into thier vision of who he is. The second time, after he has been killed, when we as readers are left to witness the outcome of the story and judge. Has he been a sacrifice for redemtion? The characters in the story have killed him in order to redeem their land or position. They are redeemed or absolved from sin in the respect that there is no blame placed upon any of them. It was an accident, noone went to jail. Are they redeemed or restored to a postion of favor? Are we in that position or "posture" to judge? How are these people different from the ancient Jews? Can we judge them likewise? Perhaps no matter how wrong it all has been, it is only for Mr. Guizac to judge and for us to forgive? It is it enough for us to see and know the truth? What do you think?

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