The Displaced Person Study Guide

The story takes place on a farm in Georgia, just after World War II in the 1940s. The owner of the farm, Mrs. McIntyre, contacts a Catholic priest to find her a "displaced person" to work as a farm hand. The priest finds a Polish refugee named Mr. Guizac who relocates with his family to the farm.

Because the displaced person is quite industrious, the Shortleys, a family of white farm hands, feel threatened and try to manipulate Mrs. McIntyre into firing Guizac, but Mrs. McIntyre decides to fire Shortley instead because of his unsatisfactory work. When she finds out that Guizac has asked his teenage cousin to come to America by marrying one of the African American farm hands, she is appalled, her appreciation of him melts down.

A few weeks later Mr. Shortley comes back and says Mrs. Shortley died of a stroke on the day that they left. Mrs. McIntyre rehires Mr. Shortley, but realizes it was Mrs. Shortley she has been missing. Under the pressure of public opinion and because of her own resentment, Mrs. McIntyre is intending to fire Mr. Guizac, but puts it off several times.

When she eventually goes to fire him, she becomes a silent participant in his murder, when - with Mrs. McIntyre quietly observing - a bitter, resentful Mr. Shortley positions a tractor to roll over Guizac's body as if by accident as he works beneath another machine. The tractor finally does so, crushing and killing him. Mrs. McIntyre's farmhands abandon her and, after she suffers a nervous collapse, she is bedridden and receives no visitors save for the priest.