Similarities And Similarities Between Odysseus And Thou

714 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The character of odysseus

' Brother Where Art Thou? and The Odyssey hold many hidden and secret messages, lessons, similarities, and differences. Although obviously each artistic piece takes place in different time eras, The Odyssey, taking place around 750 B.C. and O' Brother Where Art Thou? taking place in the 1930's, they do however have some similarities. Whether it's the characters, their actions, or the meanings behind their actions or words, there definitely are some similarities. When there are similarities, there are differences as well. Both Odysseus and Everett show a long journey of perseverance because they face many obstacles in order to make it back to their wife and kids.
Everett from O' Brother Where Art Thou? has a wife named Penny. Odysseus' wife's name is Penelope, each wives name sound alike. That is just a mere speck in the pile of resemblances between Penny, Penelope, and their husbands. Everett and Odysseus have both left their wives to fulfill a duty, Odysseus' being war, and Everett's being jail. While the husbands are away, each wife has found a suitor to take his place. However, Penelope did not want anyone to take Odysseus' place, while Penny chose to have a suitor, thinking it was the best option for her and her children. Odysseus and Everett's main objectives while on their journeys were to be able to get home to their wife and kids. Also, when Odysseus returns to Ithaca he is disguised as a beggar, but Penelope does not recognize him. Corresponding to that, Everett is performing with the Soggy Bottom Brothers but has a fake beard on, and his wife Penny does not recognize him either until he pulls the beard down to reveal his face.
One of the main reasons Odysseus and Everett are so determined to get home is not on...

... middle of paper ...

... in a nearby river. Pete immediately runs towards where the singing is from, and his friends follow. They all get seduced by the sirens. Everett and his friends show the trait of lust while this is happening. Unlike Everett and the boys, Odysseus and his men who were prepared to see the sirens and ignored them.
Once Delmar and Pete get baptized, they forget about al of their sins and states that he will follow “the straight and narrow from here out.” This is vaguely similar to Odysseus' crew not want to continue their journey after visiting the land of the Lotus-Eaters.
The way The Cohen Brothers incorporate Homer's The Odyssey is very crafty. Some similarities are obvious and some are hidden. Within those similarities, there are differences as well. The Odyssey and O Brother Where Art Thou? are both artful and unique pieces that have many things in common.

Show More
Related

  • The Heroic Qualities of Odysseus (The Odyssey) and Everett (O Brother, Where Art Thou)

    746 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Odyssey, Odysseus portrays an important trait to the story, perseverance. His perseverance really stands out as something that he has and always will have. On his long journey home, he never gives up and just stays where he is, no matter how tempting. He always manages to push through and keep getting closer to his goal of returning home. An example of when he does this is when he is faced with the challenge of getting past Skylla and Kharybdis. He knows that either path will kill at least some of his men and possibly him, but he knows he has to keep going. "And all this time,/ in travail, sobbing, gaining on the current,/ we rowed into the strait---Skylla to port/ and on our starboard beam Kharybdis, dire/ gorge of the salt sea tide." (Homer, 12. 301-305). In O Brother, Where Art Thou, Everett also showed his perseverance. While trying to get back to his wife, he also faces many obstacles that he must get through. There were many people and things keeping him from where he was going, but he pushed through and got there anyway. His greatest obstacle to get through was when he came upon the sirens. He went down to the river and the sirens got the men drunk enough to fall asleep. While asleep, Pete was turned in by the sirens, but the other men hadn't been turned in yet. They woke up and were forced to get out of there as fast as they could with a frog they thought was Pete. Delmar wanted to stay and try to change Pete back but Everett told him they needed to persevere and keep going, and they did. Another trait that both of these men show in their stories is their cleverness. Odysseus show...

    Read More

  • The Cohen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou

    1715 Words  | 4 Pages

    O Brother, Where Art Thou, a film written and directed by the Coen brothers, is a modern day interpretation of Homer’s ancient epic the Odyssey. The opening credits of the movie quote the invocation of the Muse from the first lines of the epic: “Oh Muse sing in me, and through me tell the story of the man skilled in all the ways of contending, A wanderer, harried for years on end”. The film follows Ulysses Everett McGill (portrayed by George Clooney), a depression era Odysseus, and his men Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Nelson), and Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro). The three men are escaped convicts, running from the law through the Deep South in an effort to reach home and split a (truly non-existent) treasure. The leader of their group, Ulysses Everett McGill (from here on referred to as Everett), is a smooth talking self-professed lawyer with extreme egotistical issues. Pride is a theme in both the movie as well as the original epic. In both the Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou his pride is the source of many dilemmas. The visual symbol of this pride throughout the movie is Everett’s Dapper Dan pomade.

    Read More

  • The Loyalty Crew of Odysseus

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Odyssey, Homer conveys a mixed message about Odysseus’s crew. At times, they seem loyal, whereas other scenes reveal them as disloyal. Homer does this to help center the attention on how Odysseus can fall victim to temptation and stand up to take control of his crew. The critical moments where Odysseus and his crew are in disagreement are significant because they demonstrate how Odysseus is epic, yet still human and flawed.

    Read More

  • Odysseus: The Antihero

    725 Words  | 2 Pages

    Often through great literature, there is an epic hero. In the Odyssey, Homer tells the journey of one man’s journey home from the Trojan War. The protagonist of the epic poem Odysseus is often regarded as a great hero. However, Odysseus is not quite the glorious soldier that people often see him as. Odysseus shows that he is an antihero through his pride, disloyalty, and bloodthirstiness.

    Read More

  • 'The Odyssey And' O Brother, Where Art Thou?

    1413 Words  | 3 Pages

    Athena disguises him as an old beggar and he meets up with his son, Telemachus. They form a plan to beat the suitors and then Odysseus goes to meet them. Finally, it is decided that whoever can use Odysseus’s bow to shoot an arrow through twelve axes. Odysseus, unsurprisingly, wins and starts fighting the suitors. He kills them all and reveals himself to Penelope. To make sure it’s him, she asks him to move their bed. Knowing it can’t be moved, he tells her that part of the headboard is a tree. Penelope and Odysseus are reunited and they live the rest of their lives together.

    Read More

  • The Sirens In The Siren Song

    260 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Sirens are personated as lethal and menacing. In the Sirens’ song it says “..the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons.” That insinuates how Sirens entice people into their own death. In Odysseus’ standpoint, he hoped to get away from them stating,”the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer”,signifying he could not bare to hear them croon longer.

    Read More

  • The Odyssey versus Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

    738 Words  | 2 Pages

    Brother, Where Art Thou? These stories share crucial components of the hero’s journey whether it be “crossing the first threshold,” where the main characters of both stories begin their long adventure that transforms them into heroes; “the supreme ordeal,” where the main characters are both deprived of the opportunity to get home sooner; or “return with elixir,” where Odysseus and Ulysses both return to their homes alive from the comfort of their wives. In their major plot points, the novel The Odyssey and the motion picture O Brother convey obvious similarities in key elements of their heroes’ journeys such as “crossing the first threshold,” “the supreme ordeal,” and “return with elixir.” Firstly, the main characters of both stories, Odysseus and Ulysses, share qualities of the “crossing the first threshold” that quite clearly show the similarities in these stories.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Odysseus

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    What are the key points you will want to emphasize in your online profile for Character 1 (3-4 sentences)?

    Read More

  • Homer’s Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    In both Homer’s The Odyssey and the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? the audience is given an opportunity to experience a spectacular adventure, filled with not only the sense of journey, but also the senses of peril and excitement. A tale about a Greek hero being compared to a film set in Middle America starring three jail-escapees seems rather far-fetched. However, upon closer inspection, both actually share a lot in common. The Odyssey stars Odysseus, a man famous for his heroics in the Trojan War. O Brother, Where Art Thou? shows a bit of a contrast by starring Ulysses, a former convict who escaped and began looking for “A Treasure”. So by default, one would assume that that these two stories would be completely different. However, it ends up being quite the opposite. The two stories are so remarkably alike that it is almost staggering. However, it may not just be simple similarities that make the two so alike. The main reasons why the two characters are so alike are not so much the actions that they take, as oppose to the overall human emotional aspect of the two pieces of work. For example, we see that both Odysseus and Ulysses are invested in their lives with their families, and as such, they never have a moment where they stop thinking about the lives they used to live. Both characters are extremely alike in terms of thoughts, skills, and experiences. They are both profound tacticians, as well as being rather strong and good looking men. So in the end, both of these men have plenty in common on the emotional and psychological levels.

    Read More

  • David And Odysseus Comparison Essay

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    The myths of David and Goliath and Odysseus and Polyphemos from the Hebrew bible and the Odyssey, respectively, are examples of the classic little hero versus large enemy story. From both the Hebrews and the Greeks we receive iterations of the same myth of how the gigantic antagonist belittles the seemingly frail young man simply because of his short stature compared to that of the antagonist’s, but in the end he is subdued by the young man with an uncommon method. Warrior Odysseus and shepherd boy David both encounter their own menacing giant, a Cyclops and the champion of Gath, who they bravely defeat which results in the increase of morale

    Read More

  • The Odyssey and Madea

    1226 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are occasions in both works where characters make the mistake of using their personal manner in inappropriate settings. In The Odyssey, Odysseus incorrectly assumes that the Cyclopes, Polyphemos, would be welcoming of him.

    Read More

  • O Brother, Where Art Thou?: Modern Adaptation of Homer's Odyssey

    1253 Words  | 3 Pages

    The film O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a reinterpretation of the epic poem The Odyssey. The Coen brothers, writers and directors of the film, did not over analyze their representation. “It just sort of occurred to us after we’d gotten into it somewhat that it was a story about someone going home, and sort of episodic in nature, and it kind of evolved into that,” says Joel Coen in Blood Siblings, “It’s very loosely and very sort of unseriously based on The Odyssey” (Woods 32). O Brother, Where Art Thou? contains ideas from The Odyssey for the sake of modernization and entertainment of an audience that comprehends the allusions to the epic. The Coen brothers utilize elements of Homer’s The Odyssey to improve and to give direction to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a reinterpretation which was made simply to show that an epic-adventure such as The Odyssey could be modernized to apply to modern times.

    Read More

  • Parallels between Virgil’s The Aenieid and Homer’s The Odyssey

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Virgil’s The Aeneid, there are many parallels found in Homer’s The Odyssey. In each epic, the heroes, Aeneas and Odysseus, are on a journey “home.” Aeneas is on the search of a new home for he and his companions to settle since Troy has been destroyed, Odysseus on the other hand is attempting to return to his home he left years earlier to fight the Trojan War. They both have Gods against them and helping them, both Aeneas and Odysseus are both held back by women, both voluntary and involuntarily, and they both have experiences visiting the Underworld. Despite these similarities, there are differences between the two characters and it reflects their values and the society they live in. Aeneas relies on his strength as a warrior, where as Odysseus uses his deception to survive which reflects how Aeneas is truly Roman is versus Greek.

    Read More

  • The Role of the Gods in the Odyssey

    1194 Words  | 3 Pages

    middle of paper ... ... In Homer’s Odyssey, both Odysseus and his son Telemachus embark on long, difficult journeys; Odysseus trying to return from Troy to his home in Ithaca, escaping Calypso and the island of Ogygia, and Telemachus from Ithaca to Pylos and Sparta in search of his lost father. While The Odyssey tells of the courage both men demonstrate during their respective travels, their quests are the results of the intentions and desires of gods. Odysseus is trapped in exile on Ogygia by the will of Poseidon, whose anger Odysseus attracts when he blinds the Cyclops Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, and by the love of Calypso, who wishes to make Odysseus her husband.

    Read More

  • Similarities And Differences Between The Iliad And Odysseus

    1901 Words  | 4 Pages

    An analysis of The Iliad and The Odyssey show us that Achilles and Odysseus do have several qualities in common, but that they also have numerous makings that show the differences between the two epic heroes. Both of these men are very violent and kill in very vicious was, they are also very emotionally immature, and finally both Achilles and Odysseus are favored by Athena. With all those features in common they also have several things that make themselves stand out from each other. First off, their mindset is very different. Achilles is very linear minded; he doesn’t beat around the bush and gets straight to the point of why he wants to fight. On the other hand, Odysseus is much more deceptive and cunning; he is very strategic and is almost more powerful with how he makes you think and act towards him. Next, their reasons for fighting are very different. Achilles is fighting because it’s his destiny and it’s what he has to do, Odysseus is fighting to get home to his family whom he hasn’t seen in several years. Finally, their homecomings make these two characters very different. Achilles never does get a homecoming, he dies at the walls of Troy as he is fighting. Odysseus, in contrast does end up coming home to his wife and son, that is, after he fights off the suitors that

    Read More

More about Similarities And Similarities Between Odysseus And Thou

Open Document