O Brother, Where Art Though? Summary

In the movie "O Brother, Where Art Though?" the Coen brothers borrow many characters and situations from "The Odyssey" by Homer. One of the first related situations is when Everett, Delmer, and Pete meet the blind man on the railroad. The blind man tells them about the future of their journey by saying that they will find treasure but it will not be the treasure they seek. This parallels a part in the Odyssey when Odysseus meets Teireseus who is also a former seer (blind)and he tells Odysseus about his future journey and how it will not go as anticipated. These encounters mark the first connection between encounters in the two stories.

 The second connection that I noticed throughout the whole story is that both Everett and Odysseus are journeying back home to their families. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is traveling back to Ithaca after fighting in the trojan war where as in "O Brother, Where Art Though?" Everett is journeying back to his wife and kids after escaping from prison with Delmer and Pete. This also happens to be in the same quest format as the Odyssey where the protagonist has to overcome many obstacles on his voyage. Another relation between both the movie and the book is the encounter with a "Cyclopes". In the Odyssey Odysseus and his crew interact with a cyclopes by the name of Polyphemus that lives on an island. Similarly in the movie Everett and Delmer meet Big Dan who happens to only be able to see out of one eye like a cyclopes.

A fourth similarity between the movie and the book is when Everett, Delmer, and Pete meet the sirens when they stop their car on the side of the road. In both the movie and the book the sirens lure the traveler or sailors to their doom by singing to them in a beautiful voice. In the movie the sirens are three women that sit by a river and sing, attracting Everett, Delmer, and Pete from their car on the side of the road. Likewise, in the Odyssey Odysseus and his crew are sailing across the sea when they hear the sirens and Odysseus has his crew put wax in their ears to prevent them from hearing the sirens. This is also another distraction that the adventurers come across on their way back home which also connects the movie and the book through their very similar plot design once again.

The Coen brothers also took some ideas from Odysseus' character to create Everett. For instance, they are both main characters who are trying to get back home to their wives and kids. Both characters are similar in the sense that they don't think that they need to rely on anyone else. In the Odyssey Odysseus states that he doesn't need any help from the gods and in "Oh Brother, Where Art Though?" Everett would rather have gone on without Pete and Delmer but he needed them in the beginning because they were all chained together. Those are a few of the many examples of how the Coen brothers took plot design and character ideas from the Odyssey by using a quest like format for the plot like that which is in the  Odyssey and taking character traits and giving them to different characters.