· Introduction
o This movie is about 3 prisoners that escape from jail and are going on a treasure hunt.
o Ulysses could not escape by himself because he, Delmar, and Pete are all chained together. They were working on the road and they just ran away.
o George Clooney is the main character (Ulysses)
o Ulysses’ side mission is to find his wife and stop her from marrying another man
Plot Summary
o Ulysses, Pete, and Delmar escape from jail in search of “treasure”
o Ulysses is really trying to find his wife and stop her from marrying another man
o Along the way they pick up Tommy, a guitar player, and form a band called “The Soggy Bottom Boys”, who make a famous record
o Eventually, Pete is captured by the police and placed on another chain gain, but Ulysses and Delmar free him from jail in the middle of the night
o To win his wife and his freedom back at the end of the movie, Ulysses and the Soggy Bottom Boys perform their hit song to a large crowd of people
· Parallels to The Odyssey
o The whole movie (O Brother Where Art Thou?) is a parallel to The Odyssey because George Clooney is trying to reunite with his wife for the duration of the movie, just like Odysseus is trying to reunite with his wife for the duration of the epic poem.
o His wife is about to marry another man, a “suitor”, and George Clooney is trying to stop this from happening. This is a parallel to The Odyssey, where Odysseus is trying to stop the potential suitors for Penelope.
o Ulysses’ wife’s name is Penny, which almost sounds like Penelope.
o In the Sirens Scene, the men stop driving when they hear singing. They investigate the sound to find 3 women signing in the river. They are enchanted by the singing and the next morning they think that one of the men has been turned into a frog, but he really wasn’t. This is a parallel to the part in The Odyssey when Odysseus’s men are all turned to swine by Circe.
· Why Are They Traveling?
o Pete are Delmar are traveling to escape from jail; they aren’t as concerned with where they are going as Ulysses is, they are just trying to escape to find a better situation than jail
o They are trying to find “treasure”, not a specific destination
o Ulysses is traveling with a specific goal in mind, he wants to find his wife so he is traveling for a more specific purpose than Pete and Delmar
o Travelers today look for a sense of escape from their everyday lives and to experience new cultures
· Parallel to The Odyssey
· o They all make a record with a guitar player that they pick up on the side of the road (Tommy). At the end of the movie, they do a live show to reveal who they are; the crowd loves them and
the governor pardons them. After Ulysses is pardoned, his wife takes him back.
o At the end of the movie, Ulysses has to win his wife back through playing music on stage; this is something that only he can do. At the end of The Odyssey, Penelope gets Odysseus’s bow out of the storeroom and announces that she will marry the suitor who can string it and then shoot an arrow through a line of twelve axes. Odysseus succeeded in doing so and was the only one able to complete the challenge.
· Conclusion
o O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a very funny movie that is connected in many ways to The Odyssey, and we encourage the class to watch the movie in its entirety for a good laugh.
