MatthewHampton

“’What a beauty-ful birdrrrd!’ the priest murmured. ‘Another mouth to feed,’ Mrs. McIntyre said, glancing in the peafowl’s direction.
‘And when does he raise his splendid tail?’ asked the priest.
‘Just when it suits him,’ she said ‘There used to be twenty or thirty of those things on the place but I’ve let them die off. I don’t like to hear them scream in the middle of the night.’
So beauty-ful,’ the priest said. ‘A tail full of suns,’”

It occurred to me the peacock, with its tail full of suns, or eyes may serve as a counterpart to the Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, objectively observing all that goes on at the farm.

Gradually increasing prejudice and distrust, (like a communicable disease) spreads from Mrs. Shortley to the others on the farm. This prejudice leads her to jump to incorrect conclusions about Mr. Guizac and her ideas infect her husband and ultimately Mrs. McIntyre. In this case, O’Connor makes a white European the target of the racism, by other whites.

This relationship could probably be examined from a moral/intellectual viewpoint: what is the message and how can its knowledge improve our lives? Also a topical/historical perspective: and I think of Jason here, who regularly urges us not to lose sight that these stories were written in a different era.

When something is displaced, as water is by a boat, one object takes the space of another. So Mr. Guizac was displaced, but he in turn through his own hard work displaces Mr. Shortley as the most useful hired hand.

Mrs. McIntyre is fond of telling everyone how tough she’s had it, but in this story she actually meets the Guizacs who we can tell have had a rougher time, so rough in fact that Mr. Guizac’s sister is willing to marry the black farmhand in order to escape war-torn Europe, an event that shocks Mrs. McIntyre. She, who once called Mr. Guizac her salvation, says he disrupts the balance of the farm. But Guizac actually maintains the balance: he works hard and efficiently, so Mrs. McIntyre can actually save money. It is interesting that after he dies, the balance is disrupted and everything unravels.