It has been quite a while since I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (long over a decade ago), but I am still familiar with the climax of the novel and what it means for those involved (our reader and protagonist). With that said, considering we are reading that very novel on the blog, there are inklings within the story that reflect the calamity of future events, such as Hank Morgan’s ideas of revolution, his dedication to technology, and bringing the lower serfs up to a Democratic state.
As such, with the release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, I thought it would be salient to address a famous quote attributed to the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer–one that actually belongs elsewhere in literature. Today, we are going to analyze this quote by understanding its purpose and then dissecting its history.
Meaning
No doubt, this quote is to bode unwell for the population of Earth. After successfully working as scientific director on the Manhattan Project–a program to produce an atomic bomb–Oppenheimer’s delayed understanding of outcomes seemingly blends with the grimness of the quote.
Oppenheimer, in this context, felt as though what he had done in creating nuclear weapons poised him to be Death himself, the destroyer of worlds. His reaction is to the realization that nuclear weapons could very well destroy the planet due to their awesome power. However, it is worth noting that Oppenheimer “never directly said he regretted creating the atomic bomb…” (MacArthur); however, he allegedly addressed his feelings as destroyer of worlds to President Truman.
Origin
As stated by some sources, the quote comes from Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita and it is entirely possible Oppenheimer did not even utter those words during the Trinity Test in 1945. Yet, years later he stated on a news documentary those very words, which sum up the feeling of science’s cataclysmic power.
As Hillary Busis states writing for Vanity Fair, “Oppenheimer had a long and documented fascination with the Bhagavad Gita. He learned Sanskrit in the early 1930s while working at Berkeley, after befriending a professor of the language” (Busis). In other words, Oppenheimer’s fascination with the text provides us with some relationship between he and the quote itself. It was simply fitting for their accomplishment.
Grammatical construction
The most fascinating part of the quote is its odd construction, and there are quite a few posts and responses to its anachronistic flair. As one poster wrote on English Stack Exchange: “… early modern English formed the perfect tenses of intransitive verbs of directed motion and some changes of state not with a form of to have, but to be and the past participle. I have become is the modern grammatical equivalent of the archaic I am become, but far from equal in rhetorical power.” Moreover, and as it relates to Mark Twain, another source references Twain’s usage of the present-perfect tense in his Autobiography published in 1907: “I am grown old” (Grammarphobia).
Conclusion
The foreboding nature of destruction in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is slight in the beginning chapters, but all of the elements are there in the text. Hank Morgan’s hubris, for instance, foreshadows the promise of a bright future and of a dark reality in a medieval world. Hank’s meddling can and will offset the power struggle in the kingdom of Camelot, and references to the church and other factions can only illuminate the power struggle on the horizon. Bloodshed and bloody revolution are nigh.
Works Cited
Busis, Hillary. “‘Now I Am Become Death’: The Story Behind Oppenheimer’s Indelible Quote.” Vanity Fair. Conde Nast. July 21, 2023. Web. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/07/oppenheimer-now-i-am-become-death-destroyer-of-worlds
MacArthur, Greg. “Did Oppenheimer Regret Creating the Atomic Bomb?” ScreenRant. Web. https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/did-oppenheimer-regret-creating-the-atomic-bomb/ar-AA1fmsfY
O’Conner, Patricia, Kellerman, Stewart. “Now I am become Death.” Grammarphobia. March 2, 2020. Web. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2020/03/now-i-am-become-death.html
