The Odyssey by Home

Being a generally required read, most everyone has heard of The Odyssey by Homer, meanwhile, very few have recognized the connection between it and its partner movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? by the Coen brothers. Being purposely made to portray the large epic, O Brother, Where Art Thou is full of juicy details that one would not truly understand unless they had read the epic. Throughout the movie one can find the original basics that Homer incorporated into The Odyssey with ease. The similarities between the two are quite transparent as well. The movie successfully demonstrates the hospitality found in Greece and portrayed by Homer, the mutual devotion between the company of men being led and Ulysses and Odysseus, and the primary journey found in The Odyssey.
The Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou? both contain Homer’s initial implication of the common hospitality throughout ancient Greece. In the movie, one example of this being portrayed is nearing when Ulysses, Pete, and Delmar escape from prison. The men travel to Wash Hogwallop, Pete’s cousin, house to seek refuge. Wash welcomes them into his home immediately, thus showing Homer’s theme of hospitality. He gives them stew and proceeds to talk to Pete about other family members inside his home. One could say that Joel and Ethan Coen, the directors of the movie, purposely incorporate this scene for several reasons, but the main one is to reveal and incorporate the message from The Odyssey. By having Wash so readily take in his cousin, and his cousin’s friends, the two directors wave a red flag, drawing the viewers attention to this theme. This also shows how hospitable King Alcinous was towards Odysseus. Another example of hospitality throughout the movie is found through...

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... that anyone could enjoy. By creating a story with different characters (which all blatantly stand for characters and happenings in The Odyssey), they put a twist on a classic tale, which almost all people have read, making it more desirable while keeping the archetype of the story. They may have even done this to spark people’s imaginations and make them want to read the actual literary work. Joel and Ethan may have secretly been attempting at drawing in readers to cause them to read classic literature, and eventually fall in love with Homer’s writing.

Works Cited

Homer. “The Odyssey.” Holt Elements of Literature. Third Course. Ed. Richard Sime and Bill
Wahlgren. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003. 888-947.
O Brother, Where Art Thou. Dir. Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. Perf. George Clooney, John
Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Goodman. Universal, 2000. DVD.