Where Art Thou, Ulysses?

In the epic poem The Odyssey, Homer tells the story of the heroic Greek king of Ithaca, named Ulysses, who is known as more of a trickster, than a traditional rugged warrior.  For instance, when Ulysses is called to fight in the Trojan war, which he doesn’t want to serve, he pulls some tricks to deceive people into thinking he is insane, so he won’t have to leave his wife and young son.  Ultimately, his plan is foiled and out of honor, Ulysses is forced to gather his men and leave for battle. 

After an arduous ten-year war, the Greeks had the city of Troy encircled, with most of the Trojans fortified inside their city walls.  The Greeks pretend to concede, make a large wooden horse out of their ships, and leave it as a fake tribute to the Trojans, who assume it is a gift for being victorious.  The Greeks hide inside the wooden horse, waiting to attack the Trojans at just the right time.  The Trojans proudly bring the horse inside the city walls.  During the cover of night, the Greeks sneak out of the horse and conquer the Trojans. 

Although the war is finally over, Ulysses and his men are cursed with 10 more years of wandering.  Among their many adventures, Ulysses and his men pass by sirens, who are harpy like creatures.  The sirens’ voices sound like beautiful women, which they use to draw men to their deaths on the razor sharp rocks of the island.  Ulysses and his men also have a run in with a giant cyclops who eats several of Ulysses’ men. 

The men have many other brushes with danger, including witches, giants, and other supernatural monsters, and all the while, Penelope, Ulysses’ faithful wife patiently waits for his return.  Penelope is facing trouble at home in Ithaca, as well.  There are many suitors trying to marry Penelope, since they assume Ulysses is dead.  Penelope is a clever woman and she devises ruses of her own to keep the men at bay until Ulysses comes back to her.  When Ulysses finally returns home to Ithaca, he is disguised as an elderly beggar for his safety.  Ulysses’ son is the only person to realize the beggar is his father.  Penelope challenges the suitors to shoot Ulysses’ bow and arrows as a contest to see who she will marry, knowing that no one is a match to Ulysses.  The suitors try but none are able to even string the bow.  Ulysses, still disguised as the beggar, strings the bow and shoots the arrows perfectly.  Now that Ulysses is armed, he and his son kill all the suitors that have been tormenting Penelope.  Penelope finally realizes that the beggar is her husband when Ulysses acknowledges their bed, which is uniquely carved into a live olive tree. Penelope and Ulysses are overjoyed to be with each other again (Homer). 

In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Ethan and Joel Coen adapt The Odyssey into a film about the adventures of Ulysses “Everett” McGill.  Everett escapes prison with Pete and Delmar, who he is chained to.  While on their journey, they give a ride to a black man named Tommy.  Upon Tommy’s suggestion, they record a song at a radio station to earn some fast cash.  Tommy mysteriously disappears from the group later that night. 

Everett, Delmar, and Pete encounter three beautiful women singing at the river and are hypnotized by them.  In the following scene, Everett and Delmar wake up on the flat rocks of the river, but Pete is missing.  When a frog jumps out of Pete’s clothes, Delmar assumes the women turned Pete into a frog. 

Later, when Everett and Delmar are sitting in a restaurant, with the frog inside a shoebox, a large man with an eye patch introduces himself to the two as Big Dan Teague, a bible salesman.  Big Dan talks Everett and Delmar into paying for his meal and they have a picnic under a large tree.  After Big Dan is done eating, he pulls a very large tree branch off the tree and attacks Delmar and Everett, hoping to rob them.  When Big Dan opens the box and realizes there is only a frog in the shoebox, he angrily squishes it to death. 

When Everett and Delmar arrive at a town square, Everett notices his daughters singing onstage.  They tell him that their mother said he was hit by a train and he was dead, and their mother will be marrying another man.  Everett finds his wife, Penny, in the nearby store and she confirms she will be marrying Vernon Waldrip because he has money to take care of her and the children.  Vernon and Everett get into a fist fight and a store employee kicks Everett out of the store. 

Licking his wounds, Everett goes to the movies with Delmar.  A group of prisoners, including Pete, come in to the theater as well.  Pete warns them the police are onto them.  Later that night, Everett and Delmar break Pete out of jail and the three stumble upon a KKK rally, where their friend Tommy is going to be lynched.  Everett, Delmar, and Pete dress up as KKK members and save Tommy.  That evening, they sneak into a political event as entertainers, so Everett can get the attention of Penny, who is trying to avoid him.  When Everett, Delmar, Pete, and Tommy start singing, the crowd goes wild.  This is the first time they realize anyone had heard their song. 

Penny calls off the engagement with Vernon and says she will remarry Everett, but insists Everett find her wedding ring in their old cabin.  The men journey to the cabin, but the police are waiting there for them.  A great wave of water suddenly comes rushing in and sweeps everyone away.  Everett, Delmar, and Pete float on a casket while Tommy is on a rolling desk, where Penny told Everett her ring was located.  In the last scene of the movie, Penny claims the ring Everett found wasn’t hers and he needs to go back and find her ring, even though she knows everything from their cabin is now under a manmade lake (O Brother).

Although there are many similarities between Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey and the Coen’s brothers film adaptation, O Brother Where Art Thou?, the differences between the two are numerous and drastic.  Both Ulysses and Everett are on long journeys and want nothing more than to get back home to their wives.  However, both Ulysses and Everett are punished with a longer journey due to their pride and arrogance.  

Of the multitude of adaptations between the epic poem and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, there are three characters that deserve a closer look: the sirens, the cyclops, and the wives – Penelope, and Penny.  In Homer’s The Odyssey, the sirens are deadly man eaters, while the sirens in O Brother, Where Art Thou? are no more than beautiful women who sidetrack the men with their sexuality.  The one-eyed giant cyclops in The Odyssey is a monster that literally eats people, while Big Dan Teague in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a more complex and contradictory character; he is a member of the KKK and an opportunistic thief, yet he is a bible salesman.  Big Dan’s actions are that of a monster, even though he is merely a man. 

The character Penelope in The Odyssey does everything in her power to save herself and her home for Ulysses.  However, Penny in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is aptly named, since she is concerned more with money than loyalty to her husband.  Even though Everett has only been gone from home for perhaps a year, in that short amount of time, Penny has already divorced him, stripped their daughters of his last name, told their daughters he was hit by a train and died, and is engaged to another man.  Penny only says she will remarry Everett when it appears that he will be making a lot of money from selling records. 

While The Odyssey is a traditional story of a wandering hero facing monsters and deadly trials desperately trying to get home, O Brother, Where Art Thou? has similar adventurous elements, but without the deadly consequences.  Ironically, the most dangerous person Everett encounters is his wife, Penny.  Everett, it seems, will be forced to wander on a long dangerous odyssey by his money obsessed wife, instead of a curse from the cyclops.

In The Odyssey, Ulysses is warned about the sirens that beckon men with their beautiful songs.  Men who hear the song of the sirens are entranced by the music and die with all the other men who crash upon the shore.  Ulysses puts wax in the ears of his shipmates, and has the men tie him to the mast of the ship so that he can hear the songs, without being in danger.  In The Odyssey, the sirens call Ulysses by name and say they “can tell [him] everything that is going to happen over the whole world” (Homer).  Their siren songs are enchanting to Ulysses and he yearns to go to them. 

The movie adaptation of the sirens is more powerful, sexual, entertaining, and moving than their portrayal in The Odyssey.  In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Everett, Delmar, and Pete are driving down a country road when Pete hears a song in the distance.  Pete is so overtaken by the voices of the sirens that he squeals like a pig, insists Everett stop the car, and runs to the riverbank, with Everett and Delmar following.  The men are completely mesmerized by the beautiful women who are washing clothes in the river.  The women’s dresses are soaking wet and the material clings to their breasts, sexually enticing the men as each woman makes her way to one of the men.  The sirens continue to sing and sensually rub the men’s faces and hair.  Even though the women are singing about the devil in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the sensual melody and beautiful women put the men in a trance and they stumble over their words. 

The next scene cuts to Everett and Delmar waking up on the large stones at the edge of the river with only Pete’s clothes laid out on the rocks.  When a frog jumps out of Pete’s clothes, Delmar deduces the sirens turned Pete into a frog.  While the sirens in The Odyssey are deadly man eaters, the sirens are diluted to a minor distraction.  The Coen brothers use the sirens to foreshadow the truly dangerous woman, Penny.

In The Odyssey, when Ulysses and his men arrive at the cyclops’ cave, Ulysses arrogantly chooses to wait for the owner because he thinks he can get a gift.  When the cyclops arrives and the men realize he is a giant, Ulysses tries to convince the cyclops to treat him and his men well, as was customary, to honor the gods.  The cyclops informs Ulysses he doesn’t believe in the gods laws and savagely smashes and eats two whole men that evening and two more for breakfast in the morning. 

The cyclops blocks the mouth of the cave with a large stone through the evening and during the day when he leaves.  When the cyclops returns, he becomes drunk and Ulysses and the other men blind the cyclops with a large stick.  With the cyclops now blind, Ulysses and his men sneak out under the bellies of the sheep as they leave the cave.  Ulysses’ pride led him to yell to the cyclops his name once he is back on his ship.  The cyclops then pleads to his father, the god Neptune, to spite Ulysses, which he does with a long and difficult journey home.  In O Brother, Where Art Thou? Everett’s pride about his hair is also a hinderance to him.  Police dogs and the Big Dan identify Everett by the smell of his hair pomade. 

In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coens make Big Dan appear like a giant by taking up large portions of the screen, camera angles that are shot to make him appear even larger and taller than he is, and his great physical strength is shown by having him pull a very large limb off the tree and attack Everett and Delmar with it.  Big Dan exposes them at the KKK rally because he smells Everett’s hair pomade as they walk by.  As they are escaping the KKK rally, Delmar throws the Confederate flag and it nearly lands right in Big Dan’s good eye, referencing the blinding of the cyclops in The Odyssey.  The cyclops in The Odyssey is expected to be evil; he is a one-eyed giant who is a literal monster.  Big Dan’s character is scarier than a monster, because he is a real person who is supposedly an upstanding member of society, yet he lacks character, as he assaults Everett and Delmar, is involved in a wretched organization – the KKK, and is a thief.  There is a duplicitousness shared between both the cyclops in The Odyssey and Big Dan in O Brother, Where Art Thou?.  The cyclops claims to not believe in the laws of the gods, even though his father is a god.  Big Dan is a bible salesman, professing the word of God and appears to be well respected in the community, yet is morally bankrupt.

In The Odyssey, Penelope is a faithful wife who misses her husband dearly and desperately wants Ulysses back home.  Penelope must deal with a plethora of suitors in her home eating up all the food.  She tries to keep the suitors at bay by working on a funeral garment for her father in law, sewing it during the day and pulling the stitches out each night.  Penelope is ever faithful, waiting for her husband to come back, while Penny in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is not loyal to Everett at all. 

Penny seems to be only concerned with money, and not with love for her husband.  In fact, she divorced Everett and told their daughters he was hit by a train.  Penny is engaged to a man who has a lot of money and bought her a big fancy engagement ring.  She only becomes interested again in Everett once she realizes that his song is famous, so he will potentially be making a lot of money.  Penny is the true villain in this story, as she has complete power over Everett, and he will do anything to be with her.  Every trial Everett has been through has been to satisfy her. 

Everett, Delmar, Pete, and Tommy go through another dangerous adventure to find Penny’s original wedding ring.  When Everett shows Penny the ring, she claims it is not her ring.  While it appears Everett has done everything he needs to do to win Penny back, the wedding is put off by Penny demanding an impossible task of Everett in finding her wedding band at the bottom of a lake.  Penny may keep Everett in a perpetual limbo, forced to endure even more dangerous journeys.  Perhaps when Everett’s record deal goes through, Penny’s money hungry ways will be satisfied. 

Homer’s The Odyssey and the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? have many of the same events, but the Coen brothers made extreme adaptations to the characters and storyline.  The movie merely touches on some of the points yet changes many of the details in wildly different directions.  For example, the sirens and the cyclops in The Odyssey are man eating monsters.  In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the sirens are watered down to a mere distraction and although Big Dan tries, he is unable to seriously hurt the men.  What is particularly poignant about Big Dan is that his character is representative of many religious and political leaders of today, who outwardly seem to be honest and respectable, but secretly engage in duplicitous and criminal actions.

Penny, however, is much like the Trojan horse.  While Penny’s love and affection initially appears to be the reward for Everett’s horrible and dangerous trials, she may end up being his downfall.  Instead of being cursed by the cyclops, the Coen brothers empower Penny as the force of Everett’s unfortunate wandering by continuing to send him on impossible quests.  Everett is simply a pawn in Penny’s twisted game.

Women have been at a disadvantage throughout most civilizations in known history and the negative stereotype of women is evidenced by the underlying plots of both The Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou?.  The sirens in both stories are negative forces against the men.  Even though the sirens in O Brother, Where Art Thou? don’t kill anyone, as the sirens in The Odyssey do, they are equated to evil witches who have the capability to change men into frogs.  The only female character shown in a positive light between both stories is Penelope, yet she is still at a disadvantage because societal politics of the time dictates she remarries. 

  The battle for equality between the sexes is an important of an issue today as it was 2,000 years ago.  Many women who have been forced to endure sexual and physical violence and intimidation, unequal treatment and pay in the workplace, along with many other injustices, are only now feeling safe to come forward with the prevalence of the Me Too and Time’s Up movements.  Inequalities between the sexes goes back thousands of years and is a problem that may never be fully realized or resolved.  Even though O Brother, Where Art Thou? was produced nearly 20 years ago and the story is set during the 1930’s, the Coens’ messages about the role gender plays in society is still significant. 

Works Cited

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Samuel Butler, pdf ed., Circa 700 BC.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, performance by George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Goodman, Touchstone Pictures, 2000.