Okaaay! So I was sitting in one of my many English classes (I'll talk about my insane course load sometime later), and the prof was talking about Moby Dick. For those of you who don't know,Moby Dick is a novel by Herman Melville about a big giant white whale named (you guessed it) Moby Dick. The captain of this vessel, Capt. Ahab, is psycho and winds up selling his soul to the devil to gain the power to take down the beast. Or at least he thinks he does.
So, right before Ahab goes after Moby, he baptizes his harpoons in his crew members' blood and says this latin phrase: "Ego non baptizmo te in nomine patris, sed in diaboli."
Translated, it means "I baptize thee not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil."
So, what we have here is satanism. Yiiiiikes. This is scary stuff. Now it is important to note that Capt. Ahab's quest to kill Moby Dick backfires pretty badly. But still! Satanism in Moby Dick? Who knew! I sure didn't.
And they call this "fine literature."
Perhaps we ought to take Melville's own advice. When asked by a lady whether or not his book was appropriate for her to read, he said that "it is by no means the sort of book for you...warn all gentle, fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book."
If even the author knows that he's written an "evil book," then that's definitely saying something.
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