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Letters from the Earth, Letter 4: Noah’s Villain Ark • The Devil’s Details • Episode 716

Letters from the Earth, Letter 4: Noah’s Villain Ark

Letter Four picks up right after the expulsion from Eden and runs straight through to Noah’s Ark. Adam and Eve leave under a permanent curse, having lost every pleasure they had before the Fall — but they gained one worth all the rest, which Satan calls the Supreme Art. They practice it diligently. Results follow, by the name of Cain and Abel. And these had some sisters, and knew what to do with them. Twain is poking directly at the thing everyone quietly skips in Sunday school: if you take the text literally, this is the only way the math works.

Then the Flood, and Satan’s central argument. God was dissatisfied with humanity’s morals, which — in some respects — were not any better than his own. Indeed, they were an unflatteringly close imitation of his own. He created those people and was solely responsible for their conduct, so not one of them deserved death. But if you’re extinguishing them as policy, there can be no justice in favoritism: all should be drowned, or none. Instead he saved a sample and drowned the rest, because man was his pet.

Twain, a former riverboat pilot, then takes the Ark apart with real professional relish. Neither Noah nor God had ever built an ark before or knew anything about arks, so something out of the common was to be expected. It happened. No rudder, no sails, no compass, no pumps, no charts, no anchors, no ventilation. Eleven months at sea and fresh water enough to fill two arks of its size, and the additional ark was not provided.

The letter’s best joke closes it out: when Adam ate the apple and learned how to multiply and replenish, the other animals learned the art too, by watching him. It was cunning of them. It was neat. They got everything worth having out of that apple without tasting it, and without afflicting themselves with the Moral Sense, the parent of all immoralities.

The Devil is in the details. 
Join Lester Ryan Clark and Kynan Dias for a comedic deep dive into the history of the ultimate villain, tracking his journey through theology, Paradise Lost, and modern cinema.”