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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • For me, Wolf Larsen represents or embodies Satan (at least, Satan as a literary figure). His ship is a veritable ship of lost souls, all of the ship’s hands are either recruited in drunkenness or fleeing something that seemed worse at the time. He’s incapable citing scripture, which would be a really uncanny thing for a captain of his day, and even curses God.

    The way he finds Hump even parodies the Divine Comedy; Hump (Dante), an honest but kind of hapless writer, becomes lost. The man who would guide him comes and finds him, and lo and behold, his guide is no Virgil, but, rather, Satan. Imo, the thing that really sells this is that Hump passes out underneath the golden gate (passes through the gates of hell) and is lost and found in the fog, which mirrors the conditions in the first circle of hell, Limbo. Rather than spending their voyage showing Hump what has happened while preventing him coming to harm, Wolf puts Hump in harm’s way and spends the voyage trying to convince him of what is. By the end, the formidable captain, much like the Satan of Paradise Lost, is bound in darkness, remaining proud and sure to the end.











  • I have some news for you. The Spanish state, its church, and its representatives did a LOT of enslaving of the Native Americans. The missions that pepper California and Mexico were almost entirely dependent on the labor of enslaved natives, and they were horrifically brutal about it, too. In a book I have on the subject, there’s an example of one priest who complained about how the natives were treated, and he was summarily relocated. So, Christianity had an enormous role in enslaving and murdering native Americans, and it had nothing to do with Merchants.