| Pub. Date | : Dec, 2023 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of English Studies |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJES091223 |
| Author Name | : Sonali Das |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Arts & Humanities |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 6 |
A major writer of twentieth century English Literature, T S Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and Order of Merit in 1948. His major works include The Waste Land (1922), Murder in the Cathedral (1935), Four Quartets (1943), and The Cocktail Party (1949). J Robert Oppenheimer, on the other hand, was an American theoretical physicist who was the Director of the Los Alamos laboratory for the Manhattan Project, which built nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A biographical film by Christopher Nolan, titled Oppenheimer, was released in 2023, based on the life and career of J Robert Oppenheimer. However, the point of similarity between these two diverse personalities is the impact of the Bhagavad Gita (Gita) on them. The Bhagavad Gita or "The Song of God" is considered a major philosophical poem which constitutes a part of the epic Mahabharata. Its themes of detachment, bereft of desire and love are central to the Four Quartets. Eliot tried to understand time and mystical experiences in Four Quartets in the light of the Gita, while Oppenheimer found solace in it. Gita's message of executing one's duty (karma) without caring for its result, impressed Oppenheimer. This paper attempts to present how an Indian philosophical poem impacted the Western world, i.e., Eliot's Four Quartets and Oppenheimer's life.