The Displaced Person

Finished the book, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. The final story is the longest, and the most devastating.

It's even kinda hard to determine who the displaced person is in the story. On its face it refers to the refugee himself, the Pole, Mr. Guizac. But Mrs. Shortley certainly becomes displaced by events. The owner, Mrs. McIntyre ultimately becomes displaced. But, generally, let's go with the title referring to the character who himself is called in the story the displaced person.

Although I love love loved the conversation where Mrs. Shortley is explaining to the guys what exactly a displaced person is, e.g., someone with nowhere to go, and I don't know maybe it's Sulk who points out that the displaced person is here, on the farm, which technically is in fact somewhere.

Mr. Guizac also is definitely the most overtly Christ-like figure in the stories, near as I can remember. The priest says that Mr. Guizac has arrived to redeem them. Later it's either Mrs. Shortley or Mrs. McIntyre who declares that Christ was a displaced person.

The ending is, like A Good Man is Hard to Find, fairly obvious and logical in coming, and however much you'd like it not to happen, how much you really want to stop it, or maybe just stop reading to stop it, it happens quickly and brutally.