The Displaced Person Characters

Mr. Guizac fled Poland with his family either during or just after World War II, and is trying to start a new life for himself in America. He seems to be talented, hard working, polite, and willing...

Mrs. Shortley is a character that everybody loves to hate, partly because she seems to love to hate. If that sounds like a trap, then you're getting the hang of O'Connor. Because her characters are...

Mrs. McIntyre is not a nice woman. She exploits her workers for their labor, paying them barely enough to survive, and never enough to get ahead. She also verbally abuses them. Her constant whining...

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. Because he's been there longer than even Mrs. McIntyre, he h...

Sulk is the young black man who works alongside Astor. When Mrs. McIntyre learns that Mr. Guizac has arranged for Sulk to marry Guizac's sixteen-year-old cousin (who is dying in a Polish detention...

Father Flynn is the Catholic priest who arranges for the Guizacs to work on Mrs. McIntyre's farm. For most of the story we get the idea that Father Flynn approached Mrs. McIntyre with the idea. Whe...

Chancey is the dairyman at Mrs. McIntyre's farm. He seems like a laid-back guy at the beginning of the story. He's a loving husband, and he gets along decently with the other workers. To make money...

The Judge is Mrs. McIntyre's first husband. He was much older than she was and died three years after they were married. This was thirty years before the present action of the text, which occurs wh...

Mr. Crooms was Mrs. McIntyre's second husband. All we know about him is that he is in "the state asylum" and that when he lived on the farm eight of the peacocks died.

Mr. McIntyre was Mrs. McIntyre's third husband. Even though she keeps his name, they are divorced. Mrs. McIntyre thinks that he's probably drunk "in some hotel room in Florida," and that during his...

Mrs. Guizac, we are told, at the beginning of the story, is "a woman in brown, shaped like a peanut" (1.5). This is Mrs. Shortley's observation. It's also the last time we see her in the story unti...

These two are Mr. and Mrs. Guizac's children. Rudolph is twelve and Sledgewig is nine. As with Mrs. Guizac, their characters are not developed at all. Rudolph is at least is given the role of trans...

These three are Mr. and Mrs. Shortley's children. Annie Maude is fifteen and Sarah Mae is seventeen. Mrs. Shortley thinks that Sledgewig is better looking than they are. Her son H.C. is twenty. App...