O Brother Where Art Thou: The Odyssey

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Ashley Kessler Professor Copeland English 1102 4 December 2014 O Brother, Where Art Thou brings a contemporary audience to The Odyssey Homer’s The Odyssey was written sometime between 800 and 600 BCE and since then has become one of the best known works of ancient literature. The story is of a man, Odysseus, who is trying to make his way home from the decade-long Trojan War. With an abundance of action-packed scenes of characters doing heroic things, it sets up a good basis for an impressive movie – and the Coen brothers took advantage of that in their movie O Brother, Where Art Thou. However, the Coen brothers are not the only ones who have created their own works inspired by Homer’s epic. Some examples would be Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid,…show more content…
The story is set in the Deep South during the 1930s featuring three escaped convicts searching for hidden treasure. Although they are all supposedly in search of hidden treasure, their adventures take them through a series of trials. It focuses on one character’s trials in particular, Ulysses Everett McGill – a contemporary Odysseus trying to make his way home to his wife, Penny, before she marries someone else. Their encounters include a run in with John Goodman, a salesman wearing an eye-patch that closely resembles the character of Cyclops in The Odyssey, three women in the river drawing in the men just as the Sirens drew in men with song, as well as a suitor who has claimed Ulysses’ wife, just as suitors courting Odysseus’…show more content…
There is one more parallel in the soundtrack listing, and that is present in the song “Big Rock Candy Mountain” by Harry McClintock. The song sings of going to a paradise; Odysseus has been away from home for ten years and longs to return to Ithaca (Ithaka in the movie) to his wife Penelope (Penny in the
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