The Screwtape Letters

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Contents 1 Headline text 2 Plot summary 3 Cultural references 4 Film Adaptation 5 Bibliography 6 External links

[edit] Headline text

Title The Screwtape Letters

Recent edition cover
Author	C. S. Lewis
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Religious, Christian novel
Publisher	Geoffrey Bles
Released	1942
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	160 pp
ISBN	NA

The Screwtape Letters is a work of Christian fiction by C. S. Lewis first published in book form in 1942. The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood, so as to advise him on methods of securing the damnation of an earthly man, known only as "the Patient."

Screwtape 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.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis provides a series of lessons in the importance of the Christian life and Christian morality by portraying a typical human life, with all its attendant temptations and failings, as seen from the devil's viewpoint. At the same time an attempt is made to justify and portray Christian teaching on the existence of Evil as a personified 'devil'; Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiarly morally reversed world, where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither devil 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 himself claimed that the book was distasteful to write, and he vowed never to write a direct sequel. However, in 1959 he wrote an addendum, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, which takes the form not of a letter but rather an after-dinner speech given by Screwtape at the Tempters' Training College for Young Devils. It first appeared as an article in the Saturday Evening Post. The Screwtape Letters along with Screwtape Proposes a Toast have also been published on audio CD narrated by John Cleese of Monty Python.

[edit] Plot summary

The Screwtape Letters is comprised of thirty-one letters written by a senior devil named Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood. Screwtape's letters contain advice for how to turn Wormwood's "Patient", an ordinary man living in war-time England, towards the "Father Below" (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. Wormwood's task is now to undermine the Patient's faith as well as to tempt him to explicit sins which may result in his ultimate damnation, thus reflecting the Catholic-Anglican view on "mortal sin" and salvation. It is important to note, however, that the nature of the explicit sins is discussed in such a way as to give rise to a thoughtful and reflective speculation of the nature of the distance sin creates between God and Man, as Screwtape explicitly tells Wormwood that "the gentle, sliding slope of habitual small sins is better" than any grandiose sin (presumably murder, rape, sexual immorality, etc.) for the devils' purposes in terms of damning a patient. Screwtape also notes that conventional churchgoing is so boring that the Patient will soon tire of it.

Throughout the book Lewis attempts to show the reader how it is not the large sins that are most effective in sending "patients" to hell, but instead it is the small thoughts and actions which Wormwood embeds in his patient's mind that can gradually cause the Patient to turn away from God. Screwtape doesn't even mention sexual-temptation until the 21^st letter.

Lewis's use of this 'correspondence' is both varied and hard-hitting. With his usual unexpected mix of lenient and hardline theology, Lewis covers areas as diverse as sex, love, pride, gluttony, and war. He depicts intellectuals as largely under Satan's influence, especially in regards to the "Historical Point of View."

In the last letter, it emerges that the Patient has died 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.

The short sequel essay Screwtape Proposes a Toast, first published in 1959, is Lewis's criticism of public education, more specifically, public education in America.

[edit] Cultural references

Cartoonist Bill Watterson named the fictional first-grade teacher in his Calvin and Hobbes after the devil Wormwood [1].

In the animated video to U2's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me", a copy of Screwtape Letters is seen falling from Bono's hand. Bono's characters "MacPhisto" and "The Fly", as seen in this and other video and on U2's Zoo TV Tour, were inspired by Screwtape, among other characters.

The author Peter Kreeft wrote a book "in the style of" The Screwtape Letters which is called "The Snakebite Letters". Author Randy Alcorn also wrote a book similar to The Screwtape Letters called "Lord Foulgrin's Letters." References are made to demons known only as "ST" and "WW," (for it had become a crime in hell to even speak their real names) who had their letters found by a human and were punished by Beelzebub for their incompetence.

In the 2006 book The Top Ten, a compilation of "top ten novels" lists by different writers, David Foster Wallace names The Screwtape Letters as the greatest novel in history.

[edit] Film Adaptation

On Wednesday, January 31, 2007 it was announced that Walden Media had bought the rights to turn the book into a feature film. Walden Media is the same company that previously developed Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series

[edit] Bibliography

• Hein, David. "A Note on C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters." The Anglican Digest 49.2 (Easter 2007): 55–58. Argues that Lewis's portrayal of the activity of the Devil was influenced by contemporary events--in particular, by the threat of a Nazi invasion of Britain in 1940.

[edit] External links

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