The Screwtape Letters is a Christian apologetics novel written in epistolary style by C. S. Lewis, first published in book form in 1942. The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood, so as to advise him on methods of securing the damnation of a British man, known only as "the Patient".
Screwtape (along with his trusted scribe Toadpipe) holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy ("Lowerarchy") of Hell, and acts more as a mentor than a supervisor to Wormwood, the inexperienced tempter; almost every letter ends with the signature, "Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape". In the body of the thirty-one letters which make up the book, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin in his Patient, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine. The Screwtape Letters was dedicated by C.S. Lewis to his friend J. R. R. Tolkien.
In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis provides a series of lessons in the importance of taking a deliberate role in living out Christian faith by portraying a typical human life, with all its temptations and failings, as seen from the demon/devil's viewpoint. Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiarly morally reversed world, where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither demon is capable of comprehending or acknowledging true human virtue when he sees it.
Versions of the letters were originally published in The Guardian, and the standard edition contains an introduction explaining how the author chose to write his story.
While The Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis' most popular works, Lewis claimed that the book was "not fun" to write, and he "resolved never to write another 'Letter'." (See his Preface to Screwtape Proposes a Toast.) However, in 1959 he wrote a sequel to it, Screwtape Proposes a Toast. The Screwtape Letters, along with Screwtape Proposes a Toast, has also been released on both audio cassette and CD narrated by John Cleese of Monty Python and Joss Ackland.
Plot overview
The Screwtape Letters comprises thirty-one letters written by a senior demon named Screwtape to his nephew, a young demon named Wormwood. Screwtape's letters contain advice for how to turn Wormwood's "Patient", an ordinary man living in war-time England, toward "Our Father Below" (Devil / Satan) and away from "the Enemy" (God).
After the first letter, the Patient converts to Christianity, and Wormwood is given a severe rebuking and threatened with the "usual penalties" at the House of Correction for Incompetent Tempters. A striking contrast is formed between Wormwood and Screwtape during the rest of the book. Wormwood is depicted through Screwtape's letters as much closer to what conventional wisdom has said about demons, for example, wanting to tempt his patient into extravagantly wicked and deplorable sins and constantly writing about the war that's going on for the latter half of the book. Screwtape, on the other hand, isn't interested in getting the patient to commit anything spectacularly evil, saying that "the safest path to hell is the gradual one." He sees a demon's primary goal to befuddle and confuse, rather than tempt.
Lewis's use of this "correspondence" is both varied and hard-hitting. With his own views on theology, Lewis covers areas as diverse as sex, love, pride, gluttony, and war. Lewis, an Oxford scholar himself, suggests in his work that even intellectuals are not impervious to the influence of such demons, especially in regards to being led towards placated acceptance of the "Historical Point of View."
In the last letter, it emerges that the Patient has been killed during an air raid (World War II having broken out between the fourth and fifth letters), and has gone to Heaven. Wormwood is punished for letting a soul 'slip through his fingers' by being handed over to the fate that would have awaited his patient had he been successful: the consumption of his spiritual essence by the other demons. Screwtape responds to his nephew's desperate final letter by assuring him that he may expect just as much assistance from his "increasingly and ravenously affectionate" uncle as Screwtape would expect from Wormwood were their situations reversed, paralleling a situation where Wormwood himself turned his uncle over to Satan for making a religiously positive remark that would offend him.
Screwtape Proposes a Toast
The short sequel essay Screwtape Proposes a Toast, first published in 1959, is an addendum to The Screwtape Letters. It takes the form not of a letter but rather an after-dinner speech given by Screwtape at the Tempters' Training College for young demons. It first appeared as an article in the Saturday Evening Post.Then he goes and meets with his wife for dinner.
Screwtape Proposes a Toast is Lewis's criticism of levelling and featherbedding trends in public education; more specifically, as he reveals in the foreword to the American edition, public education in America (though in the text, it's English education that's held up as the purportedly awful example).
The Cold War opposition between the West and the Communist World is explicitly discussed as a backdrop to the educational issues. Screwtape and other demons are portrayed as consciously using the subversion of education and intellectual thought in the West to bring about its overthrow by the communist enemy from without and within. In this sense Screwtape Proposes a Toast is more strongly political than The Screwtape Letters where no strong stand is made on political issues of the day, for example, World War II.
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