Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds — J. Robert Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer famously quoted this from The Bhagavad Geeta in the context of the nuclear bomb. The way this sentence is structured feels weird to me. “Now I am Death” or “Now I have become Death” sound much more natural in English to me.

Was he trying to simulate some formulation in Sanskrit that is not available in the English language?

  • @fidodo
    link
    31 year ago

    Nobody would bat an eye if it was “have become” or “am becoming” either. I don’t know when it changed but I think it’s just a small change in how the word is used in modern vs old English.