Summary
Everett’s daughters walk up to him and give him a hug. When he asks why they aren’t going by “McGill,” his last name, they become serious and one of them tells him, “Mama says you was hit by a train.” Everett is flustered, insisting he wasn’t hit by a train, as the girls tell him they now go by their mother’s maiden name, “Wharvey.” Then Everett’s daughters tell him that his wife has a new suitor, Vernon T. Waldrip, and that they’re engaged to be married the next day. Everett runs off to the five-and-dime to find his wife.
When he arrives at the store, another of his children runs toward him jubilantly. His wife, Penny, is holding a baby that Everett doesn’t recognize. He confronts his wife about the fact that he didn’t know he had another child and the fact that she’s lied and told his children he was hit by a train. “Lots of respectable people been hit by trains!” she tells him, adding, “What was I supposed to tell ‘em? That you were sent to the penal farm and I divorced you from shame?” Vernon, Penny’s fiancé walks up and asks if Everett is bothering Penny. Everett walks up to Vernon and sniffs, before accusing him of using his hair treatment.
Everett pulls Penny aside and whispers that he is upset with her for lying. Penny seems momentarily seduced by her ex-husband, but then tells him that Vernon has a job and is a more stable, reliable partner than he ever was. After telling Everett that Vernon will be able to financially support their children, Penny says, “The only good thing you ever did for the girls was get hit by that train!” When Everett insults Penny, Vernon confronts him and the two men get into a fistfight, with Vernon punching Everett repeatedly. Eventually, the shopkeeper throws Everett out onto the street.
We see Delmar and Everett at the movies. Everett is complaining about Penny still, saying, “Truth means nothing to a woman, Delmar. Triumph of the subjective.” Suddenly the movie stops in the middle, and the doors open. A policeman with a rifle wanders in and blows a whistle as Delmar and Everett slouch in their seats. Another door opens and a line of prisoners are let into the movie theater. They sit and the movie starts again. Among the prisoners is Pete, who wheezes in the direction of Delmar and Everett, “Do not seek the treasure.” Delmar and Everett turn around and notice him and Pete explains that the police are planning to ambush the two men at the site of the buried treasure. Delmar and Everett can hardly believe it, and Delmar tries to mouth to Pete, “We thought you was a toad!” but Pete simply repeats, “Do not seek the treasure.”
The scene shifts to the lavish estate of Pappy O’Daniel, sitting on his porch with his son. Pappy is upset because Stokes is painting him as some kind of enemy to the common farmer. Pappy’s assistants sit nearby and marvel at what a well-run campaign Stokes has, which makes Pappy all the angrier.
The scene shifts with a crack of thunder. We see a noose lit up by lightning. Then we see Pete lying in bed at the penal farm asking God for forgiveness. Suddenly, Everett pops up beside Pete’s bed and Pete squeals. Everett is sitting on Delmar’s shoulder and he uses a tool to break off Pete’s shackles. Having helped Pete escape, the three men walk down the road, Pete telling his companions about what happened with the Sirens. Pete gets emotional when he tells Everett and Delmar that he told the authorities about the treasure. “I’m awful sorry I betrayed you fellas. It must be my Hogwallop blood,” he says. Everett and Delmar look disappointed, but they accept Pete’s apology. Pete cries and hugs them, grateful for their forgiveness.
Everett breaks off from his two companions to make his own admission. After hesitating, he tells Delmar and Pete that there never was a treasure, that he lied about it. “So where’s all the money from the armored car job?” asks Delmar, and Everett admits that there was never such a job, that he was actually imprisoned for practicing law without a license. Everett reveals that the reason he lied to Delmar and Pete is that he knew he needed to give them a reason to bust out of the penal farm. “I knew my wife was gettin’ married, I gotta stop it,” Everett says. Pete looks horrified and says, “I had two weeks left on my sentence…My added time for the escape, I don’t get out now till 1987.” “I guess they’ll tack on 50 years for me too,” says Delmar. Everett tries to level with them, offering them a halfhearted apology.
Suddenly, Pete chases Everett and fights him, yelling, “You ruined my life!” The boys tumble down a hill nearby and happen upon a strange gathering in a clearing. It’s a rally of the Ku Klux Klan, and the trio looks down at large groups of white-cloaked members, all dancing and singing in unison, surrounded by burning crosses. The Klansmen stop, as their leader in a red cloak begins to sing and hold out his arms.
Everett looks down and realizes that the Klansmen are preparing to lynch Tommy, the black guitarist they got on the road. “We gotta save him,” Pete says as the leader continues to sing “O Death” and the Klansmen march in a cross formation. As the song ends, the leader begins to make a speech. We see Pete, Delmar, and Everett emerge from some nearby bushes in Klansman robes that they stole from three members. The trio joins the crowds, preparing to save Tommy from getting lynched. The leader makes a speech about the fact that they must scorch evil from the source, warning the Klansmen that they need to protect their women from “from darkies, from Jews, and from all those smart people say we come descended from monkeys.” The Klansmen cheer and chant, preparing for the hanging of Tommy.
As some Klansmen escort Tommy towards the noose, Everett, Delmar, and Pete follow behind, trying to blend in. One of the Klansmen notices that the trio is out of place and takes off his mask to inspect. It’s Big Dan, the one-eyed Bible salesman, and he can sense that something is wrong. As Tommy gets closer to the noose, the boys call out to him and tell him they’re there to save him. This does not comfort him, and he tells them, “The devil’s come to collect his due.” As Everett starts to whisper a plan to Tommy, Dan comes over and pulls off the boys’ hoods. “No!” the Klansmen shout in unison. Because the boys’ faces are dirty, the Klansmen mistake them for black men. The leader of the Klansmen pulls off his hood, revealing that he is Homer Stokes, the reform candidate. As chaos breaks out, the boys run away and the giant burning cross at the front of the field falls on Big Dan.
Analysis
When Delmar and Everett arrive in town, Everett is surprised to see his daughters singing at the Homer Stokes rally, and he is especially surprised to hear that his ex-wife, Penny, is engaged to be married to a “bonafide” gentleman, Vernon. After the travails of Everett’s journey, he is deflated to discover that his home is not how he left it, and that his family is complete disarray, in spite of his relatively short absence. Not only has his wife decided to leave him for another man, but his daughters inform him that he was hit by a train, a clearly false conviction they seem to hold with a great deal of authority. Thus, not only has Everett been absent from home, but he has been written out of the family record books and replaced with someone else.
Everett goes straight to find his wife, Penny, who insists that she cannot be with him anymore and that she has chosen a man who is everything that he is not. Vernon, in contrast with Everett, is successful, wealthy, and has none of the rascally or starry-eyed spirit that Everett does. He is a practical man who can take care of Penny and her children in a way that Everett couldn’t. The contrast between the two men is played to comic effect. When Everett first sees Vernon, he swaggers towards him slowly as though he is about to clock him in the jaw. Instead, vanity prevails, and Everett simply asks Vernon if he is wearing his hair treatment. Even through this disheartening narrative turn, the film retains its ironic humor, and expectations are usually subverted. When the two men fight, even though it seems as though Everett—a man who has spent some time in jail—will win, Vernon proves to be a much more skilled fighter.
Indeed, Penny’s imminent marriage to Vernon proves less surprising and more important to Everett than it initially seemed. After Delmar and Everett break Pete out of jail and Pete reveals that he told the authorities about the buried treasure, Everett makes a far more disruptive admission when he reveals to his companions that there never was a treasure, and that he lied about it to convince Pete and Delmar to come crash his ex-wife’s wedding. Knowing that they wouldn’t come without an incentive, Everett completely made up a treasure of 1.2 million dollars. This admission is the biggest ironic twist of the story so far, and the entire premise of the film, the motor of the men’s journey is re-contextualized. The adventure was never for gold, but for the sake of saving Everett’s marriage. Understandably, Pete is angry.
Before Pete can get too angry, however, the men come upon yet another strange gathering emerging from the natural world of the rural South. After tumbling down a hill, the men come upon a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan, a large white supremacist organization. This group, like the group of Baptists and the Sirens, are engaged in collective gesture and song, as they chant together and march in formation. Furthermore, bluegrass and folk music again features prominently. It seems that almost everyone in O Brother Where Art Thou is an unexpectedly gifted and compelling musician, and the leader of the Klan is no exception, as he expressively sings the song “O Death.” The image, steeped in racist associations and violence, is an unsettling one. Yet again, the Coen Brothers thrive on the unsettling juxtaposition between light and dark, violence and beauty.
This contrast between the irreverently humorous and the dark carries through the whole scene with the Ku Klux Klan. Hundreds of white supremacists are gathered around a burning cross, preparing to lynch none other than Tommy, the black guitarist who sold his soul to the devil. It is an undeniably unsettling and disturbing scene. The way the scene is shot and written, however, is such that it highlights the absurdity of the gathering. The Klansmen move and speak in almost complete unison, which gives the impression that they are all mindless followers, incapable of free thought, dumb cogs in a machine. Additionally, the leader’s rhetoric is filled with blatant ignorance, and is so baldly bigoted that it strikes a satirical note. Adding yet more to the comedy is the fact that two previously introduced characters are Klansmen: the leader is none other than gubernatorial candidate Homer Stokes, and the man that manages to sniff out the Soggy Bottom Boys is the abusive, one-eyed Big Dan. Furthermore, when Everett, Pete, and Delmar are unmasked, the Klansmen mistake them for black men, due to the dirt on their face. These coincidences and misrecognitions, at once astounding and ridiculous, heighten the absurdity of the entire scene.
