The history of the works of literature
from which screenwriters Joel and Ethan Coen drew in writing the screenplay for
their December 22, 2000 adventure comedy Oh
Brother, Where Art Thou? Begins with the oldest known work of
literature in the recorded history of Western civilization, The Odyssey by the 8th
Century BCE Ancient Greek poet Homer.
The first parallel between Homer’s Odyssey and the Coen Brothers’ O Brother is, of course, the most
obvious. The primary protagonist of Oh
Brother is Ulysses Everett McGill, played by actor George Clooney.
“Ulysses” is the Latin form of the name Homer gives to the protagonist of his Odyssey: “Odysseus”, king of the
Ionian Island of Ithaca. The character of the governor of Mississippi, played
by the late actor Charles Durning, is named Menelaus O’Daniel. Menelaus was a
king of the Greek city-state of Sparta, who features prominently in the works
of Homer. The wife of Clooney’s protagonist, played by actress Holly Hunter, is
named Penny. In Homer’s Odyssey,
Odysseus’s wife, the Queen of Ithaca, is named Penelope.
The second parallel between Homer’s poem
and the Coen brothers’ film comes before the first line of dialogue is spoken.
While the scene is still black, words appear onscreen:
“O Muse! Sing in me, and through me tell the
story of that man skilled in all the ways of contending. A wanderer, harried
for years on end.”
In his 2007 article Homer in Tishomingo, Doctor John Cant of the University of
Essex Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies notes [Cant 70] how
closely this follows the first lines of Book I of Homer’s Odyssey:
“Tell me, O muse, of the man of many devices,
who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.
Many were the men whose cities he saw, and many were the nations with whose
manners and customs he was acquainted; and many were the woes he suffered in
his heart upon the sea while seeking to win his own life and to achieve the
safe homecoming of his comrades. Yet even so he saved not his comrades, though he
desired it sore.” [Homer, Murray 1.1]
Oglethorpe University Professor of
English Douglas McFarland supports this view in Marymount Manhattan College
Associate Professor of Philosophy Mark Conard’s book The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. [McFarland 50]
Another parallel comes in the form of the
blind seer, played by actor Lee Weaver, as is noted by University of Utah
Department of Languages and Literature Associate Professor of Classics and
Contemporary Literary and Cultural Studies Margaret Toscano in her 2009 article
Homer Meets the Coen Brothers.
In one of the opening scenes of the movie, the character of Delmar O’Donnell,
played by actor Tim Nelson, asks the blind man if he works for the railroad, to
which the blind man replies: “I work for
no man”. Toscano writes that this is a reference to Book IX of Homer’s Odyssey, wherein the hero
Odysseus introduces himself to the Cyclops Polyphemus with the pseudonym “Outis”, which in Greek translates as “Noman”. The character of Pete Hogwallop,
played by actor John Turturro, then asks the blind man if he has a name, to
which the blind man replies: “I have no
name.” Toscano writes that this is an allusion to Book X of Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus
refuses to give his name to the enchantress and sorceress Circe, the Ancient
Greek goddess of magic. [Toscano 49]
In his 2003 article History, Race and Myth in O Brother Where Art Thou? University
of Georgia Department of Comparative Literature Professor of English Hugh
Ruppersburg writes that Weaver’s blind seer is an avatar of Tiresias, the blind
prophet of Apollo, Greek god of knowledge, music oracles, poetry, and prophecy,
in that he gives the film’s protagonists a prophecy that Ruppersburg likens to
those of Pythia, the Oracle of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi:
“You seek a great fortune, you three who are
now in chains. And you will find a fortune—though it will not be the fortune
you seek. But first you must travel a long and difficult road—a road fraught
with peril and pregnant with adventure. You shall see things wonderful to
tell…and oh, so many Startlements. I cannot say how long this road shall be.
But fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward.
And though the road may wind and your hearts grow weary, still shall you follow
the way, even unto your salvation.” [Ruppersburg 10]
This view is supported by University
of Copenhagen associate professor Doctor Pernille Flensted-Jensen in her
article The Odyssey and O Brother,
Where Art Thou? In the Danish
Journal of Philology and History. [Flensted-Jensen 18] Tiresias appears to the hero Odysseus in
Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey, as
is noted by Columbia College Chicago Associate Professor Susan Kerns in her
article O Homer, Where Art Thou?
Flensted-Jensen and Toscano note a parallel between the
character of Sheriff Cooley, played by actor Daniel Von Bargen, and the ancient
Greek sea god Poseidon. In Book XIII of Homer’s Odyssey, in his unrelenting lust for revenge against
Odysseus, Poseidon ignores the decree by his older brother Zeus, Ancient Greek
god of justice, law and order and the king of the Ancient Greek Pantheon of
gods and goddesses, that Odysseus will reach his home kingdom of Ithaca. In one
of the last scenes in O Brother, Where
Art Thou? Sherriff Cooley likewise ignores the fact that Governor O’Daniel
has officially pardoned the film’s three protagonists with the words: “The law.
Well the law is a human institution.” [Flensted-Jensen 22][Toscano 50] Though in the Sherriff’s
case his obstinacy is motivated not by any personal grudge against any of the
heroes, like Poseidon’s against Odysseus, but by an unflinching and dogmatic
sense of justice for their crimes.
Flensted-Jensen and Toscano further draw a parallel between
the character of Mister Lund, played by actor Stephen Root, and Homer himself,
the author of The Odyssey. Root’s
Lund is the owner of a radio station who offers to pay each the film’s
protagonists ten dollars, the equivalent of more than a hundred and fifty
dollars today, in return for recording them singing. Lund is a blind man, and
Homer’s name in Ancient Greek, “Homerus”, translates as “blind”. [Flensted-Jensen
22] Toscano writes that the Coen
brothers’ blind radio station owner is “a
promoter of oral poetry, the kind of poetry that can be enjoyed be even the
illiterate.” [Toscano 58] Half all of Homer’s writings are in the form of
speeches and four centuries after Homer’s Odyssey, in Book X of his Socratic
dialogue The Republic, the Classical
Greek philosopher Plato described Homer himself as the “first teacher” of the tragedians.
In Homer
in Tishomingo, Cant interprets the character of George Nelson, played by
actor Michael Badalucco, as a stand-in for Homer’s mythical Greek hero Ajax the
Great. In one scene in the Coen brothers’ O
Brother, Where Art Thou? Nelson opens fire from the window of a speeding
car on a heard of cows, muttering to himself: “I hate cows worse than coppers.” [Cant 70] In the play Ajax by the Ancient Greek
tragedian Sophocles, written nearly four hundred years after Homer, Athena, the
ancient Greek goddess of war strategy, prevents Ajax from killing Spartan king
Menelaus and his brother, Mycenaean king Agamemnon, by tricking him into
believing that a herd of cattle are his enemies. Ajax slaughters some of the
cattle, but takes a flock of sheep home to torture them, believing one of them,
a ram, to be his rival Odysseus himself, of whom Ajax is jealous for winning
the armor of the mythological Greek hero Achilles. This view is supported by
Ruppersburg, who notes that the real-life George Nelson, whose real name was
Lester Gillis, not only “never set foot
in Mississippi”, but died three years before O Brother, Where Art Thou? Takes place, in a November 27, 1934
shootout with Federal Bureau of Investigation special agents Herman Hollis and
Samuel Cowley in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, Illinois known as the “Battle
of Barrington”. [Ruppersburg 13] Kerns notes the same.
Cant [70], Flensted-Jensen [19], Kerns, Ruppersburg [10-11] and
Toscano [2, 4] all take note of the fact that the three Sirens in the Coen
brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Played by American actresses Christy Taylor and Mia Tate and South African
actress Musetta Vander, are avatars of the Sirens in Book XII of Homer’s Odyssey.
Flensted-Jensen,
Kerns and Ruppersburg, however,
deviate from the other two in further noting that the Siren scene in the Coens’
O Brother, wherein the film’s
protagonists are led to believe that the Sirens have magically transformed one
of their number into a toad, can also be interpreted as an allusion to Book X
of The Odyssey, in which the
sorceress and goddess of magic Circe likewise transforms all of Odysseus’s crew
into pigs save for Odysseus himself and his second-in command Eurylochus. [Flensted-Jensen
19] [Ruppersburg 11]
Cant [70], Flensted-Jensen [20,
22], Kerns, McFarland [48], Ruppersburg
[10-11], and Toscano [2-4] likewise write that the character of Daniel Teague,
played by actor John Goodman, parallels the character of Polyphemus, king of
the Cyclopses and son of the sea god Poseidon, in Book IX Homer’s Odyssey. Like the Cyclops Polyphemus, Goodman’s
character is a giant, known as “Big Dan”
with one eye, the other covered with an eye patch. [Toscano 57] When Odysseus
and his crew first observe Polyphemus, he is milking his sheep and goats,
seeming harmless. [Flensted-Jensen 20]
Likewise,
Ulysses McGill and his comrades first meet Daniel Teague as a Bible salesman. [Flensted-Jensen
20][Toscano 2-3]
When Goodman’s character is later
revealed to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as he escorts the character of
Tommy Johnson, played actor Chris King, to be lynched, Tim Nelson’s Delmar
throws the Confederate flag at Teague’s one good eye like a javelin, mirroring
the way in which Odysseus and his crew blind the Cyclops Polyphemus with a
wooden stake. Odysseus’s preparation of the staff of green olive wood, which
Polyphemus had intended to use as a club, by ordering his crew to file it even
is mirrored by Teague tearing a branch off a tree and stripping it of its
branches in preparation to use it as a club with which he assaults Ulysses McGill
and his comrades. [Flensted-Jensen 20][McFarland
48]][Ruppersburg 11][Toscano 56] Flensted-Jensen notes that the fact that Odysseus uses the Cyclops’s own
fire to heat the staff until it is “glowing
with heat” [Homer, Butler, IX] before driving it into Polyphemus’ eye is
mirrored in the fact that Daniel Teague is ultimately killed by Ulysses McGill
and his comrades dropping the burning cross from Teague’s own Klan rally on top
of his head. [Flensted-Jensen 22]
In
Homer in Tishomingo, Cant
writes that in Chapter XXIII of Homer’s Odyssey,
Odysseus’s wife “Penelope regards the
return of her Ulysses as an unmitigated misfortune and accepts him back under
strictly enforced conditions.” [Cant 70] In The Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Flensted-Jensen
draws an inverse parallel between the scene in Book XII of Homer’s Odyssey in which Odysseus and his
crew beat the suitors vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage to death and the
scene in the Coen brothers’ O Brother,
Where Art Thou? In which Penny’s
suitor, Vernon Waldrip, played by actor Ray McKinnon, beats up Ulysses McGill.
However, Flensted-Jensen also notes that the heroes’ wives recognition of them
plays pivotal role in the resolution of both The Odyssey and the Coen brothers’ film. [[Flensted-Jensen 21] When Ulysses
McGill first encounters his wife, Penny says: “He’s not my husband. Just a drifter, I guess. Just some no-account
drifter.” Odysseus first interacts with his wife Penelope in Book XIX of
Homer’s Odyssey disguised in
the rags of a beggar. [Flensted-Jensen 22] In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope recognizes her husband in Book XXIII by
his knowledge of their bed, made from an olive tree still rooted to the ground.
In the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where
Art Thou? Ulysses McGill gains recognition from his wife Penny that he is
not, as she earlier labeled him, “a
drifter”, when he reveals himself to be a member of the popular “Soggy
Bottom Boys”. [Flensted-Jensen 21]
Ruppersburg likens
the scene in O Brother wherein
Ulysses McGill and Nelson’s Delmar discover in a movie theatre that the
Circe-like Sirens did not, as they believed, magically transform their comrade
Hogwallop into a frog to Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey
wherein Odysseus visits the underworld to converse with ghosts. Ruppersburg
notes that the Coens’ script for O
Brother describes Hogwallop’s appearance in the movie theater as “haunted” and the manner in which Ulysses
McGill stares at him as being “as if at a
ghost”. [Ruppersburg 8]
Toscano,
however, likens Odysseus’s journey into the underworld to Ulysses McGill’s
visit to what she describes as a “fire
and brimstone meeting” of the Ku Klux Klan. [Toscano 49] Flensted-Jensen
also likens the visit to the Klan rally to Odysseus’s voyage to Hades. [Flensted-Jensen
22]
Conclusion:
That
screenwriters Joel and Ethan based their Oh
Brother, Where Art Thou? On Ancient Greek poet Homer’s The Odyssey is well established.
1.
Cant,
John. “Homer in Tishomingo: Eclecticism
and Cultural Transformation in the Cohen Brothers’ “O Brother Where Art Thou?”
Comparative American Studies. Volume 5, Issue 1. (March 2007):
63-79.
2.
Chadwell,
Sean. “Inventing that “Old Timey” Style:
Southern Authenticity in O Brother
Where Art Thou?” Journal of Popular Film and Television. Volume 32,
Issue 1. (Spring 2004): 2-9.
3.
Flensted-Jensen,
Pernille. “Something Old, Something New,
Something Borrowed: The Odyssey and O
Brother, Where Art Thou?” Danish Journal
of Philology and History. Volume 53. (2002): 13-30.
4.
Homer.
“The Odyssey”. Trans. A.T. Murray. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919. http://sul-derivatives.stanford.edu/derivative?CSNID=00000519&mediaType=application/pdf
5.
Homer.
“The Odyssey”. Trans. Samuel Butler. Internet Classics Archive, 1994. http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html
6.
Kerns,
Susan. “O Homer, Where Art Thou? A Greek
Classic Becomes An American Original”. Xchanges.
Volume, Number 2. (March 2002): http://www.xchanges.org/xchanges_archive/xchanges/1.2/kerns.html
7.
Macfarland,
Douglas “Philosophies of Comedy in O
Brother, Where Art Thou?” The
Philosophy of the Coen Brothers.
Ed. Mark Conard. Lexington. University Press of Kentucky, 2009. 41-54. http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_10602.pdf
8.
Ruppersburg,
Hugh. “Oh So Many Startlements”: History,
Race and Myth in O Brother Where
Art Thou?” Southern Cultures. Volume 9, Number 4. (Winter 2003):
5-26. https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.uwsp.edu/journals/southern_cultures/v009/9.4ruppersburg.pdf
9.
Toscano,
Margaret. “Homer Meets the Coen Brothers:
Memory as Artistic Pastiche in O
Brother, Where Art Thou?” Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. Volume 39, Issue 2. (Fall
2009): 49-62. https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.uwsp.edu/journals/film_and_history/v039/39.2.toscano.pdf
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