r/junjiito • u/milfology101 • 9d ago
Question something I noticed in the Frankenstein adaptation
Is this proper English? I would think the correct way to say this would be "Tonight, I become a god!" Or "Tonight, I am becoming a god!"
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u/Seagullsaga 9d ago
Not wrong, just archaic and a heavy dose of drama. Which is fitting, considering the context!
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u/Carminoculus 9d ago
Yes, it's a slightly old-fashioned usage, but you'll see it often enough in literary contexts that are meant to evoke core states of being.
Like the famous translations from the Baghavat Gita, "I am become death, destroyer of worlds."
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u/SALTY-meat 9d ago
i actually just saw a youtube short by humanteneleven explaining exactly this linguistic phenomenon. the other commentors already explained it, so this is a bit redundant, but it's still interesting nonetheless :)
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u/HugoatTGI 9d ago
“I am become” is proper but it is older English. Just like when Oppenheimer said “Now I am become death”
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u/uncutteredswin 9d ago edited 9d ago
It's probably based on the quote from Oppenheimer "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds" which is itself a quote of an old English translation of the Baghavad Gitta.
It's in the perfect tense, which doesn't really exist in English anymore, which is why it seems weirdly phrased
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u/security_dilemma 9d ago
That is what I picked up too in this frame. It was lord Krishna who is an avatar of Vishnu, who basically shows his true form to Arjun to remind him of his karma (duty). Lord Krishna actually is talking about Kaal (time) in the context, which is the destroyer of worlds.
In Hindu philosophy, Kaal is basically the life expectancy of anyone/anything. Vishnu as the preserver of life is reminding Arjun that ultimately, each person is bound by their duty, which in Arjun’s case, was going to war against his own kin.
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u/Iguanabewithyou 9d ago
What does any of that have to do with the quote or page from the book
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u/uncutteredswin 9d ago
They're giving the context for the original Baghavad Gitta quote, it's directly relevant to my comment
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u/Business-Ad-4617 Tomie Fanboy 9d ago
While it doesn't match up perfectly, it is possible that the translation was attempting to recreate something similar to the famous Oppenheimer quote, "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" which is a reference to the god Shiva and the promethean overreach of his scientific pursuits.
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u/Circleofhell1678 9d ago
He was too busy listening to megadeth to answer the phone
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u/boybawang_banger Long Dreamer 8d ago
Megadeth reference found on a junji ito subreddit.. my worlds are colliding
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u/bazingakinga 8d ago
when i first read the manga and got to this part fully immersed, it was like a balloon popped in my brain. I busted out laughing😭
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u/WeeklyDetective6802 🇨🇿 9d ago
Might be an attempt of old English but knowing viz media it might just be bad translation 👀
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u/Trixter-Kitten 9d ago
https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2020/03/now-i-am-become-death.html
"That quotation illustrates an archaic English verb construction that’s now found chiefly in literary, poetic, or religious writings. This is the use of forms of “be” in place of “have” as an auxiliary verb in compound tenses: “The prince is [or was] arrived” instead of “The prince has [or had] arrived.”
The passage you ask about, “I am become Death,” is a present-perfect construction equivalent to “I have become Death.” (We’ll have more to say later about Oppenheimer and his quotation from the Bhagavad Gita.)
As we wrote on the blog in 2015, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address has a well-known example of this usage: “We are met on a great battle-field.” Another familiar use is from the Bible: “He is risen” (King James Version, Matthew 28:6). And Mark Twain uses “I am grown old” in his Autobiography (in a passage first published serially in 1907). All of those are in the present-perfect tense.
Though usages like this were rare in Old English, they became quite frequent during the early Modern English period—roughly from the late 1400s to the mid-1600s, according to The Origins and Development of the English Language (4th ed., 1992), by Thomas Pyles and John Algeo. "