The Race Bird...?

"The peacock stopped just behind her, his tail-glittering green-gold and blue in the sunlight-lifted just enough so that it would not touch the ground." (285)

To me, the peacock is the most striking symbol in Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person."  The setting of this story is filled to the brim with racism, and here is a bird that symbolizes the racial environment of this story.

The peacock is a magnificent, beautiful bird consisting of many different colors fitting together in perfect harmony.  The 'harmonious existence of these colors on the feathers of this bird strongly contrastts with the existence of the many different races in the Southern locale of this story.  Mrs. Shortley shows animosity toward the new Polish help, her husband eventually harbors the same hatred, and Mrs. McIntyre shows hatred towards all of these different races.  There seems to be no mercy from any side in this environment.

According to Mrs. McIntyre, peacocks used to be prosperous on her property, but she let them die out and now there is only one left.  This state of peacock existence on this property represents the state of race relations in the South.  All the peacocks meant all of these different colors running around, sticking together.  Now, however, there is only one left.  Racial harmony is a thing of the past, and it may soon become nonexistent whatsoever.  This peacock represents a society on the verge of total race relation chaos. Throughout the story, it stays to the side of all the action, frequently mentioned in passing. But, at the end, when Flannery O'Connor delivers her usual devastating, dark ending and Mr. Guitar dies, and everything descends into chaos, the peacock is not mentioned again. In readers' minds, it is dead. So, too, have race relations become totally hostile at the end of this story, that any illusion of harmony has completely disappeared.

Discussion question: Do you believe that race relations could ever recover in such a hostile place? Clearly, this story is fiction and things have progressed in the real world. But in this fictional world, created by Flannery O'Connor, do you believe that the tensions present could ever subside?