Welcome to Tumnus’s Book Shelf where we review any and all books related to Narnia and CS Lewis! For this weeks review, we will be looking at CS Lewis’s
The Screwtape Letters
Book Title:The Screwtape Letters
Author: CS Lewis.
Publisher: HarperOne; New Ed edition (February 6, 2001)
ISBN-10: 0060652934
ISBN-13:978-0060652937
Summary of the book:
Some Possible Spoilers.( Please Highlight to read)
Junior Tempter Wormwood was assigned to try and lead his human patient into Hell. Through a series of letters his “uncle” Screwtape instructed him on how to perform this task and about it’s importance to their cause. As they were at war with God, every soul that remained lost was a small victory for them. They devoured souls and needed every single one.
The first letter focused just on the importance of keeping the patient from becoming a Christian. However the focus of their correspondence shifted when the patient became a Christian. The goal from then on in was to either lead the patient into abandoning the faith, or to prevent him from growing. Their tactics were the same as they have used from the beginning.
From surrounding him with certain kinds of people, to attacking his relationships, to coercing him into being a zealot, to simply clouding his emotions, Wormwood was to stop at nothing. If he failed he would be punished accordingly. Screwtape instructed Wormwood to keep their letters private and say nothing to any other tempters.
SPOILERS!The letters carry on until the patient was killed in an air raid. Screwtape was enraged at this news. Wormwood had failed. They had lost the patient completely as he was now safely in Heaven.END SPOILERS!
Review.
Most writing classes will always tell you that writing a villain is more fun than writing a hero and a lot easier. There is some truth to that. A hero will always have a specific motive and a strong moral compass that can’t be broken. Villains, however provide plenty of room to wiggle around and cut loose. However at other times the villain can be very difficult and challenging to write, especially if a villain is your “hero“.
CS Lewis himself knew that first hand in writing what many consider one of his “best” works, The Screwtape Letters. Prior to this book, no writer accept for John Milton in Paradise Lost, had attempted to tell a story strictly from a demons point of view. Unlike Paradise, there is no poetic grandeur with Screwtape. While Milton’s epic poem is often quoted ( “ Better to reign …”) , the Letters have seen their share of imitators in the past few decades. Some didn’t work too well and missed the mark, others could have been better and some actually were really good. Irregardless, Lewis’s work is the original masterwork, and it is easy to see why it is hard to properly emulate.
One thing that makes it so unique is how it is written. Screwtape Letters is a satire. In a satirical work you take a very serious subject and look it it in almost a humorous way. In reading satire, you end up wondering why do we do that. For example Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift is a satire and in it he talks about a cannonball in such a way that it makes the reader wonder, “ why do we design such monstrosities?”
In Screwtape Lewis takes our sins and vices and makes us wonder, “ Why do we fall for the lies and temptations of the evil one?” We see through Screwtape that the demons like it best if we are on the safest road to Hell. That path is the one is with out any warnings, or signposts. They lead us upon it simply by using our most common vices that seem almost harmless and in the end we end up into deceiving ourselves about what we do.
One could even say that the is essentially the language the evil one likes to use best. What else could the words of the serpent to Eve have been but a parody or a satire of the truth that she knew? This allows the character of Screwtape to be a more convincing devil as we know his language so well. Because we have heard it before it has become our language.
Another thing unique about Screwtape is the way the titular character is written. Most “Screwtape inspired” characters, or even demons for that matter, come off as either campy-over the top figures, akin to Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa in the Power Rangers, a super-intimidating evil force like Darth Vader ( even Frank Peretti’s demons in his earlier works had a lot in common with Vader), or a laughable cartoon like the villains in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. This leaves the reader almost expecting the devil to say, “Curses, foiled again!” or “ And I would have gotten away with it too, had it not been for….” This could lead the reader into one of the two dangerous extremes Lewis warned about with demons: disbelief or unhealthy interest.
Both of these he avoided in his portrayals of Hell and the demons. The vision of Hell and the demons that Lewis strives to paint is something that no one else has gauged. It seems like a bureaucracy. Lewis himself said that he based his demons off of bureaucrats. Because of that Screwtape doesn’t come off as a snarling dragon or a mischievous imp in red tights and a pitchfork. He talks like a politician as was intended by Lewis as it was more convincing sound. According to Lewis the greatest evil occured in these settigns and not in the more “sinister” places of the world.
Because of how Screwtape talks, he doesn’t seem evil to some readers. In Screwtape’s mind, he isn’t evil. To Screwtape and Wormwood they are doing what’s right. In his twisted mind Screwtape is still an angel of light and Satan is the right one to follow. To those he’s tempting, they should also seem good. That is what makes him so convincing: they appear as the really are, not how they’d rather have us see them.
There are also times in the banter between the two demons when Screwtape comes across more as an uncle chiding a misbehaving nephew and less of the stereotypical villain rebuking a failing underling. Even at the end Lewis allows Screwtape to maintain his same wit that he has in the entire work. It tells the reader that Screwtape has been on this road before, it isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.
Unlike most works in this genre, Lewis made sure not to use dated examples in his letters. While his references to “ The War” are clear that he is meaning World War II, it could apply to just about any war to occur from now till the end of history. SPOILERS!The description of how The Patient died could just as well apply to the battle fields of Iraq or Afghanistan, the World Trade Center in New York on 9-11, or the jungles of Vietnam as well as World War II. That’s what makes Screwtape so excellent is it is timeless.END SPOILERS!
Wars and vices like envy, pride, bigotry, vanity, strife, zealously, greed, and lust which are dealt with in The Screwtape Letetrs will exist long after current “pop-cultural threats from the world” like Harry Potter-mania and Da Vinci Code fever have died down. The situations that the patient faces in the letters are the same as we face now. By not using pop-cultural references that readers of his day would understand, as some are oft to do now, he allows Screwtape to speak to every generation.
The fact that the “Patient” is never given a name also allows him to be an “everyman” and allows the letters to be about any one, even you or me. It’s what makes the letters so chilling, the fact that you start to wonder if two demons could really be talking about you like this. It doesn’t cause you to look under the beds for demons, but begin to pray for coverage in your own weak areas.
We have no idea what Wormwood is like except it seems that this is one of his first assignments. He seems very excited by everything he finds on Earth giving the reader the impression that this is his first taste of the world. He seems to enjoy death and destruction and is easily distracted from his job by the nature of everything going on around him. Perhaps it is the fact SPOILERS! that he is distracted by the “scream of bombs, the fall of houses, the stink of smoke in the nose and in the lungs…” that allows the patient to slip through his fingers and into Heaven.END SPOILERS!
Some Christian readers have wondered and even been concerned about the fact that “Screwtape” and “Wormwood” call each other uncle and nephew. We know from scripture that demons were once angels who fell, and therefore cannot be married or given in marriage. Why the title?
“Nephew” and “Uncle” are familiar terms that denote a closeness in a relationship, between a younger and older person. Many times a child will call an older male, who is a close family friend an “uncle,” even if he is not the brother of the mother or father. It invokes not only closeness at times, but also authority. Even in The Last Battle, the children make reference to Polly Plummer being “Aunt Polly” even though she is of no relation to them, but is simply a term to refer to her . The “Uncle” “Nephew” relations are not meant to be a theological heresy. They are meant to be terms of authority, between the demons similar to Tolkien’s use of the title “lord” in Lord of the Rings.
This leads to a very puzzling aspect of the nature of the demons. They speak of “loving” each other and “desiring” each other in ways that can be misread as affection or even romantic nature. Lewis makes it clear both in his preface, and in the letters themselves that the terms they use for “love” and “desire” are simply the same ways that they mean for us. To Screwtape, a tempter like Wormwood, or humans like us, are food. Him saying he loves humans or Wormwood or desires them is akin to me saying I love a cheeseburger and fries with a milk shake on the side, and not the love I may have for a girl.
Screwtape’s hunger, is a hunger for food. He needs to fill it either with a human soul or a tempter, just as I would fill my hunger or desire for food with a plate of nachos and not a girl. This shows what Peter writes in 1st Peter 5:8, “Be self controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” This allows Screwtape’s “love” to stand in contrast with the love of God that he distorts. Screwtape says in one letter that they want humans for food, God wants to have a relationship with us and make us his children. God, through His Son Jesus Christ, is willing to die for us to make us His children, Screwtape wants to kill us to make us food.
Beyond a plethora of books based on or inspired by it, The Screwtape Letters has been influential elsewhere. The teacher in the Calvin and Hobbes comics was named for the demon Wormwood, as was the Secretary General of the UN in Mark Miller and Alex Ross’s DC comics graphic novel Kingdom Come. In a U2 music video Bono is seen reading the book. Lewis’s friend and colleague JRR Tolkein also referred to it in some of his own letters to his son as he said it was Wormwood who was keeping Lewis and Tolkien from meeting. Notably Lewis also dedicated he book to him as it was Tolkien who led him back to the Christian faith.
Some have misread the book and felt that Lewis had a sinister, Satanic bend in writing it. That was not the case. Lewis, a devout Christian actually stated that this was his least favorite work and the hardest one to write because it was so focused on evil. There was no way for him to craft a juxtaposition to Screwtape as he felt he was too deficient to write anything from an Angelic perspective. Because of it he’d never write another book like it again. He only had one goal in mind which he set out to do well, which is wonder what it would be like if we could read into the devil’s conversations about us.
By allowing us to intercept this mail, Lewis helps us become aware of the enemies attacks .They are so foreign to us, yet so familiar. Screwtape speaks to us in a language that is alien to us, yet it is familiar to us by nature. It is a satire, yet in it’s satirical approach it is also very serious. It’s a classic work, yet like the Bible itself it’s just as relevant today as it was when it was first written.
Like Lewis I have no way of knowing how this correspondence came to me. But I have read it and I know what to do with what I’ve learned from it. It is more than worth the read. Dare you open The Screwtape Letters and see for yourself? You may be surprised what you’ll read. Because what you read may even be about you.
Five out of Five shields
