What does ～がままになる mean?

Question

I saw this in a book I'm reading:

思考に空白が生まれ、突撃してくるキラーアントの姿を、ただ受け入れるがままになった。

I'm familiar with まま but I've never seen it used that way. How should I interpret the last part of the sentence?

Answer 1

Grammatical explanation could be even more confusing, but the conclusion is, V + がまま has just the same meaning as V + まま "staying as (one) V".

My thoughts were interrupted, and I couldn't help allowing the killer ant to charge into me (lit. ...how the killer ant charges into me).

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What makes you confused probably is the が. Since がまま is a fixed phrase using Classical Japanese grammar, where が and の meant the opposite of what they do today, the が should be interpreted as の. But you may notice that when verbs qualify nouns they don't need particle の anyway. It's true, actually this phrase is an "imitated" Classical Japanese and this が is totally redundant with verbs. Despite this fact, the construction begets many idioms such as: あるがまま "as it is; que sera sera*", なすがまま "at the mercy of", わがまま "selfish" (this one is grammatically correct).

*^{Incidentally, this is bad Spanish, too...}