O Brother Where Art Thou Character Analysis

Southern-ness in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Southern-ness usually is the thing about the American South. Something is southern-ness not because "it contains certain ingredients, whether those elements be language, subject matter, plot, characterization, or ideas" (Rubin), but because it focus on "a common Southern history, the significance of family, a sense of community and one's role within it, a sense of justice, the region's dominant religion, the issues of racial tension, land and the promise it brings and a sense of social class and place." Southern-ness also makes "some or all of those elements have been made to take on attributes in relationship to each other that might not otherwise exist in just that way" (Rubin). O Brother, Where

is an adventure comedy film which was produced and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. This movie is set in the 1930s Mississippi during the Great Depression. It talks about an adventure of three criminals, Ulysses Everett McGill, Pete Hogwallop and Delmar O'Donnell, who escape from the chain gang and try to find the treasure before the huge flood comes, while there are only 5 days left. During their adventure, the Coen brothers show us a real and fantastic land of the South by creating the Southern-ness in this film. Talking about the Coen Brothers' comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, most of people will focused on the relationship between Homer's The Odyssey and this movie, while at the end of beginning it says the movie is "based upon The Odyssey by Homer" (Coen). Others may focus on the music in this movie while it won Album of the Yeas in 2001's Grammy Awards. This research paper will focus on this movie's relationships with southern-ness and explains how does this film create a feeling of southern-ness through the southern literature, the issues of racial tension and the nostalgia of the

It is about the land and the promise it brings. At the end of this film, three main characters' homeland is covered by a huge flood, which is caused by a reservoir used to generate power for the electrification of rural area. When Everett, Delmar and Pete cling to the coffin in the flood, Everett says:
"Yessir, the South is gonna change. Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a payin' basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbojumbo, the superstitions and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yessir, a veritable age of reason—like the one they had in France—and not a moment too soon" (Coen).
"This impending flood, which will wash away and submerge the family homestead, hangs over the entire film, and it is, in fact, the symbolic event that divides the southern past from the electrified present" (Ruppersburg, 23). The flood washes all the things and indicates the past of the South is gone. It also brings us a feeling of loss when we lose the previous homeland. In this case, the Everett is against the electrification and commercialization of the