I can’t think of another book quite like The Screwtape Letters. In this volume, C. S. Lewis presents a series of fictional letters written by a senior demon, Screwtape, to a junior demon—his nephew Wormwood—advising him on how to corrupt the human assigned to him and lead him toward damnation. What follows is both an entertaining work of clever satire and a thoughtful exploration of human morality, fear, and weakness. Filtered through Screwtape’s malevolent voice, Lewis digs into the ways in which positive acts and feelings such as prayer, faith, and love can be subverted and manipulated to serve evil purposes.
Across dozens of letters, Lewis offers many interesting moral and theological ideas. Among those that stuck with me were: the notion that war is not necessarily cause for demonic celebration, since pain and tragedy can inspire human kindness, charity, and faith; that Christians wielding their faith as a mask for political ideologies is useful to demons, as it distracts people from believing “because it is true, but for some other reason”; that many young people suppress their tastes and virtues to fit in with “Normal and Regular and Like Folks,” thereby surrendering true individuality; that the more horrendous the sinner, the more delicious a meal they make for demons (and while demons may eat more these days, due to the ample supply of cowards, hypocrites, and adulterers, they miss feasting on the likes of Henry VIII and Hitler); and finally, that “the fine flower of unholiness can grow only in the close neighbourhood of the Holy. Nowhere do we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar.”
I would absolutely recommend The Screwtape Letters to anyone who is interested in exploring themes of good, evil, and personal morality. And to top it off, how often do you get to read the musings of comically named demons who eat each other and become so outraged by the power of human love that they morph into giant centipedes and need their secretary to transcribe on their behalf until they calm down?
The Once and Future Lit 