Any who thinks this guy was making high minded “literary references” has not read his writing...
http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays/
I’m not sure why we’re writing off the Islamic angle since the words were Ismail Ax (exactly referenced in Islamic writings) and not Ishmael Axe. If you were making a literary statement to the world surrounding this event that you thought was important enough to etch onto your body, wouldn’t you care to spell the reference correctly?
I’m also not sure where this “game tag” angle is coming from either. His roommates made no reference to his being a gamer or there even being a game console in his room.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17cnd-ROOMMATE.html
Actually, there are reports that he spent a lot of time alone in his room playing a specific game but I don’t know the name. And the first thing my college age son said when he saw the name is that it was a gamer tag.
Apparently there are websites for these games and you take a name and add Ax on the end. And these are games so if he was heading out to kill, he might have wanted to keep the persona on.
Secondly, the guy is a senior with a English major. I am quite sure he know what a metaphor is, and I think that is the purpose of the so called tattoo.>P>it could be a Islamic metaphor, but it does not work as well as the "axe that changed the world" or whatever they say the metaphor means.