C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters has entertained and enlightened readers the world over with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the unique vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to “Our Father Below.” At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis gives us the correspondence of the wordly-wise devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation—and triumph over it—ever written.
MY THOUGHTS:
This is the first time I've ever read this spiritual classic through from cover to cover, although I've dipped into it here and there over the years. But I decided this year would be the year.
It is an epistolary novel. We all know humans are said to have guardian angels, but it seems we are each assigned personal demons from hell too. Wormwood is a novice tempter whose Uncle Screwtape writes him a series of letters, instructing him in the treatment of his human charge at a pivotal moment. Not only has a serious war just broken out, but the young man has just turned to the enemy's camp and become a Christian, and the two fiends aim to get their own claws stuck back into him.
Okay, from the very outset, we must get used to topsy-turvy references. God is always referred to as 'the Enemy' while Satan is depicted as 'our father below.' Once we have that straight in our heads, we are treated to a wealth of diabolical wisdom full of snares, traps, and subtle attitudes tweaks that have proved effective against humans for generations.
Don't let its modest size fool you. It's a really dense little book, full of pithy prose slabs. Some of the letters are worth pondering several times. 'The fact that devils are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you,' Screwtape tells his nephew. Therefore, Lewis didn't make the book overly funny. It is full of witty, pointed satire rather than comedy.
'Humans are amphibians, half spirit and half animal. The Enemy's determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined our father to withdraw his support from him.'
And how about, 'You first allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his friends.' Ooh, is that a call-out to all book bloggers to assess our own motives?
Throughout the story, the pair of demons aim to set the young man up with dodgy women, but he falls in love with a nice, pure girl from a squeaky clean Christian family. They then realize that they might be able to use this young lady's fixed, somewhat judgmental opinions to infuse the young man with spiritual pride. And so it goes on. I appreciate how Screwtape identifies the young man's mother as a glutton, even though she eats extremely sparingly, for the vice is not a matter of quantity but rather the extent to which our consumer habits grip our passions and priorities.
My problem is the ending. I got to Letter 31, the culmination of the book, after a long day in hospital where I'd had some day surgery. At home that same night, I thought nothing could lift my spirits better than finishing off one of the bestselling, uplifting classics of the last century. But the ending broke my heart!
It devastates me in the same way the The Last Battle hurts me at the end. And I partly blame myself. I should have seen where Lewis was going with this. I should have! I should have!
As it is, I suspect these same two demons have now been assigned to me. I can clearly imagine Screwtape telling Wormwood, 'Use timing to your advantage. Be sure this woman ends the book during a moment of personal fatigue and vulnerability. Then she'll always remember one of the most sublime and insightful novels of the 20th century with a touch of trauma.'
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