The Screwtape Letters

Screwtape Is A Senior Devil Whose Job Is To Increase The Store Of Malice And Misery On Earth. He Achieves This By Carefully Targeting Humans And Then Providing Them With An Array Of Temptations That Can Take Their Minds Away From God. Under Screwtape's Charge Is His Nephew Wormwood, A Novice Devil. The Letters Between Them Record Their Efforts To Turn A Young Man From His Newly-adopted Christianity Back To 'our Father Below' (satan). Wormwood Receives Detailed Instructions On How To Exploit The Man's Weaknesses And Bring Him Permanently Around To Sin. Both Shocking And Amusing, C S Lewis's Satire The Screwtape Letters Was A Bestseller In Its Day, Selling Over Half A Million Copies. It Was A Brilliant Riposte To The Creeping Atheism, Existentialism And Materialism Of Lewis's Time, Attracting The Smart Reader Who Normally May Have Dismissed Christianity As A Moral Guide; Lewis's Screwtape Works Relentlessly Not Simply To Turn The Victim Towards Sin, But To A Fashionable Resignation About The 'way Of The World' That Denies Human Progress. The Book Is Quite A Challenge To Understand, Because Everything Is Morally In Reverse. You Have To Remind Yourself That The 'enemy' Referred To Is God, And That The Way Of Life Advocated By Screwtape Is The Exact Opposite Of A Good Christian Life. For Instance, Screwtape Bemoans That That The Enemy Has Given Human Beings Free Will To Choose The Good, And That God Actually Loves 'the Human Vermin'. Each Chapter Deals With A Different Temptation Such As A Lack Of Neighborly Love, Smugness, Lust, And Identifying With Non-believers Because They Are Clever And Witty.