Student Question
What does Armageddon allude to in "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth"?
Quick answer:
In Arthur C. Clarke's science-fiction short story "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth," the word "Armageddon" is used as an allusion to the great battle at end of the world as prophesied in the Book of Revelation in the Bible.
Arthur C. Clarke's science-fiction short story "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth" was published in the magazine Future Science Fiction in 1951, at a time of widespread concern about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the looming possibility of nuclear war.
In the story, the word "Armageddon" is used as an allusion to a place, and to both a prophesied and all-too-present event.
"Armageddon" appears only once in the New Testament of the Bible:
And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. (KJV, Rev. 16:16)
The word also appears only once in "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth...":
He [Marvin] was looking upon the funeral pyre of a world—upon the radioactive aftermath of Armageddon.
In each instance, "Armageddon" alludes to a final great battle that will determine (as prophesied in the Bible) or has determined (as used in Clarke's story)...
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the destiny of all humanity.
In the Bible, the allusion is to an epic battle in which the forces of evil are vanquished by the forces of good at a place near Jerusalem referred to as the "plains of Megiddo," also known as "Har-Magedon," from which the word "Armageddon" is derived.
In Clarke's short story, the allusion is to a battle in which neither side of the conflict is identified as either good or evil, but which battle essentially destroys the earth, making it inhabitable for mankind.
From his vantage point in the lunar colony where he lives, Marvin sees the Earth as a glowing "funeral pyre," the result of the utter devastation of the Earth, and the effect of the lethal radiation unleashed by the nuclear weapons used by both sides in the battle.
Clarke also makes an allusion in the title of the short story itself. "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth" is also taken from the Bible, Psalm 137:5:
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem...
The allusion is to the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of King Solomon's temple, the First Temple, by the Babylonian's in 586 BCE. In the title, and in the story. Clarke compares the destruction of the Earth with the destruction of Jerusalem.
The Temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt, but it remains to be seen if the Earth, as Marvin's sees it, will ever again be habitable.