A Dapper Dan Man (not actually about Dapper Dan)

 After the first screening of O Brother, Where Art Thou, I'm gonna be real: for most of it I can't draw parallels with The Odyssey. The obvious things, like Ulysses as Odysseus, and the blind prophet on the rail car. Other things, not so much. Even though I feel stupid for admitting this, I really don't get how the baptism scene fits into the Odyssey, which I feel like is definitely a reference to something.

One thing that I (think I) could draw a connection, was xenia. Delmar's relative (cousin or something) doesn't ask any questions when the three show up ratty and dressed as convicts, giving them food, clothing and shelter. He later betrays the xenia, but plot armor saves our heroes. I don't know much about 1930's America, but I don't think I would be willing to let in 3 convicts who randomly show up at my door, even if one of them is my "kin".

Another example is the black guitarist they pick up on the side of the road. Hitchikers aren't so common anymore I believe, with the advent of Uber, Lyft, and the like, but Ulysses seems way too lax about picking up some rando off the country roads for modern standards. Even though it's quite different from the hospitality offered in Greece, I believe it can be qualified as xenia.

As an extra (to extend the length of this post), Ulysses is still lying and being tricky, 4000 years later. He lies to the blind man in the radio, and has a weird way with words that is both incomprehensible yet intelligent at the same time. The over-the-top-ness of his diction is quite humorous, but I could definitely recognize is as the same strain of verbal trickery as detailed in Odysseus's storytelling and testing.

Comments

  1. Elizabeth TFebruary 13, 2019 at 9:28 PM

    I agree. I had a lot of trouble drawing comparisons, although it became clearer on the second day (with Penny and the sirens and Ulysses lying ALL THE TIME), but my big question is - where is Athena? She was sort of a vital character, but she doesn't seem to have a counterpart, which seems really weird to me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. KatFebruary 15, 2019 at 7:31 PM

    I didn't connect Pete's cousin letting them stay there to the concept of xenia before but I totally see it! Even though he ended up betraying them. I agree that it was sometimes hard to connect things in the movie to The Odyssey but thankfully it made a little more sense as it went on. Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  3. MitchellMarch 14, 2019 at 9:16 AM

    I agree with your assessment of Wash Hogwallop's xenia--and the parallels are quite close to the examples of hospitality we see in _The Odyssey_. He first offers to "knock them chains" off (akin to bathing and oiling the guests), then they sit around the table eating stew, which Delmar acknowledges is tasty (before realizing where it comes from), and during the meal Wash informs them of the fates of various relatives who suffer during the Depression (akin to the reports of war heroes from Troy), then they sit around and listen to the Pappy O'Daniel Flour Hour on the radio (entertainment by a bard), and then they're given a place to bed down for the night.

    Because he feeds his guests *horse*, I'm inclined to associate Wash with Nestor. And his son, who helps them "R-U-N-N-O-F-T" would be Pisistratus, who escorts Telemachus via chariot to Sparta. The parallels are there if you look really closely, and at an odd angle.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You get a xenia! You get a xenia! Everyone gets a xenia!

We've just finished Odysseus's tale in Book 12, and to be honest, I'm really starting to enjoy the story a little bit. It's pretty cool to listen to, and there are a lot of interesting monsters and events within the epic. However, this blog post is about xenia. As I was listening to all the presentations, one word I heard many, many times was "xenia". It seemed that every presentation had some variant of "this is x character performing good/bad xenia". This happened so much that towards the end of the presentations, I was writing stuff like "xenia shows up again... shocker" and "xenia part 37: Electric Boogaloo". Jokes aside, I think it's clear that xenia is obviously an important part of Greek culture, as even as Odysseus fights monsters and goes on wild adventures, he always manages to pull a host out of his ass and have them host him (or not, as the cyclops does). It's actually quite lucrative, it seems like his trave...
Read more

How Ma is affected by Room

Two words: Room's wack. That being said, we get a lot of insight into Jack's thoughts and how he deals with transitioning from living in a eleven by eleven room for 5 years to the wide and open space of Outside. While it's obviously a difficult and perplexing transition for Jack, we can see glimpses of how difficult and traumatic the transition is for Ma. Most obviously, she freaks out at any door-related sounds: whenever a door is opened or shut without her knowing, it's clear that it's an unpleasant sound for her. It's clear that their both in the psychiatric hospital for a reason, and we can see Dr. Clay being very patient with them, expecting that they will need a long time to recover. Another problem that becomes obvious is "separation anxiety" that both Ma and Jack do and will face. When Ma gets defensive the first time the term is brought up, she says something along the lines of "Me and Jack will never be apart", which is a problem ...
Read more

Baby Steps

At this point in the book (chapter 12 at the point of writing), our hero the narrator is starting to grow a pair. But to what extent? Clearly he's made some progress, as his ridiculously naive younger self used to not even pause to think about being humiliated and puppeted in the first chapter, and I'm very happy to see that there's some character development. Conversely, we can't say that he has fully developed Emersonian self-reliance either. For example, he doesn't talk back to the union, and they were clearly unfairly accusing him. In the prologue I think we can safely say that he's fully reached that level of self-reliance, basically almost killing a guy and stealing power from an unused basement. So how far is he down the line from Chapter 1 to the Prologue? In my experience, when you stand up for yourself for the first time, you gain confidence for the next time. And the next time, and the time after that. It's like a snowball; once you get rolling yo...
Read more