Criticism Of The Screwtape Letters

The demons that lurk around each and every one of us, in the darkness and shadows, can use things like reality or bad influences and many other ways to get in their “patient’s” head. The demons can’t even use the same things that God uses, to get to us; the demons just use it in an evil way. In The Screwtape letters, all of these pains plus many more pains are used to lure “Patients” towards the darkness. In the Gospel of Matthew, we are warned about demons and other false teachings, “beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15).

He does this because Wormwood wants the girlfriend to feel like she’s not good enough for the patient. Eventually the patient loses the love of his life because he she was convinced that she didn’t deserve him. Screwtape also believes that instead of waiting until marriage to have sex, a person should be able to do it whenever they feel like it. Eventually at the end of the book the patient dies but he is sent to Heaven. Wormwood wasn’t successful in turning the patient away from Christ. Screwtape is turned into a larger centipede for failing to convince his nephew to convince the patient to leave God .The theme of this novel is would be to try and prove that Christianity will always prevail. Even though as Christians our faith is tested everyday we should just persevere and know that God is with us. Even though Screwtape was evil he was also very wise. Screwtape knew exactly what to do in order to lead the patient down the wrong path. Whenever a person is suffering Screwtape says that “it feels like I had a rich buffet.” Screwtape basically lives of people’s daily suffering. Wormwood is easily persuaded, whatever his uncle tells him to do to the patient it would get done. He’s also easily excited, whenever the Europeans went into a second war he was “delirious with joy.” But Screwtape had to teach him not to get joyful so fast. Finally, the patient would be described as a person who is easily influenced. Throughout the novel you notice that whatever wormwood tells him to do it would be done. He believed that the things he was doing would benefit God, but it was actually benefiting Satan. But in the end Satan lost because the patient went to Heaven to be with our Father in Heaven. In the end Christianity still beat Satan and the patient is happy in

Lewis refers to God, Satan and Hell many different ways. When mentioning God, he uses the term “The Enemy” which in our minds, would normally be in reference to Satan. He also refers to him as “The Father Above,” and to Satan as “Our Father Below” and “High Command.” Hell is referred to as “Our Father’s House.” “Screwtape Letters” is written with this context because it is from the point of view of a demon who goes by the name of Screwtape. This is satirical, it is the opposite of the way we would normally think. In our minds, we think of God as “High Command,” and as Our Father, not as “The

Could anyone feel sympathy for a groveling, sly demon? The demons did have a hard job, but it was a despicable job of choice. In The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, Screwtape busily instructs his nephew, Wormwood, who scrambles to trip up his “patient,” and bring the man to hell. Throughout the book, everyone should plainly realize that neither Screwtape nor Wormwood deserved pity or sympathy in the least. The first reason for this is that the demons’ malevolence revealed itself plainly in the book. Secondly the demons’ hate for all that is good and innocent reared its ugly head, snarling in the reader’s face. Finally, the pitiable, vile, cruel plans of the demons wiped out any lingering sympathetic feelings in the reader. The demons were purely cruelty.

The patient in The Screwtape Letters is an interesting character. He is a struggle for Wormwood who is trying to keep him close to the Devil. I see him as a writer who has been put into the army to do defence work. I see him as a writer who was a professor so his knowledge is very extensive in many things in life.

In the Screwtape Letters, it talked a lot about how the devil can distract a Christian. A devil can shift a person’s focus on God with random thoughts and actions. In the book, Wormwood is told by Screwtape to distract his patient from converting to Christianity. Even along the patient's journey of getting into church and being a better follower of God, Wormwood found any little way to make his mind wander. Even today the devil can shift a Christians focus to mundane thoughts. So as we go through Screwtape letters looking at the distractions used by Screwtape lets also think about what mundane things the devil can do to us today.

In the Screwtape Letter, by C.S. Lewis, Srewtape insists that all pleasures are created by the Enemy, meaning God, and that demons have not figured out how to create them. It’s an idea commonly seen in Christian theology. God brought all things into this world to be good, and those things can and have been corrupted by demons and the lot. What Screwtape is saying is that, God wants people to experience pleasure, and that it is a demon’s job to corrupt a person’s sense of that pleasure.

demon, Screwtape, addressed to his nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood is assigned his first “patient” and it is his skilled Uncle Screwtape’s job to help him through the process. A patient is the demon’s human that they are assigned to keep away from God and to constantly face with temptation. Screwtape receives reports from Wormwood each week and then responds with advice and techniques. Screwtape highlights many different ways to keep us from following God, especially with limiting our understanding of “real” to mean only the material (23). In other words, demons don’t want us to think about the spiritual world around us, only about real materials lacking the meaning of the purpose of life so that we don’t ask questions about what will happen to us after death.

I chose to do my research and reading on The Screwtape Letters written by C.S Lewis, which is a novel written in unique perspective of a Senior Devil named Screwtape who writes thirty-one letters to his nephew Wormwood who can be considered somewhat of a novice devil or demon of some sort. In these letters, as readers, we find that they are undated and that they are meant to offer advice to his younger demon nephew as he attempts to steal the soul of a human, referred to as “the patient”. We are first introduced to the concept of “the patient” rather than “the human” when Screwtape explains to Wormwood about one of his first experiences with one. In his first letter, Screwtape explains that the best way to lose the human is if the human somehow decides to use reason because at that point, his reason will take him to God. He does this by teaching his nephew that, “Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it “real-life” and don 't let him ask what he means by real” (2). Ironically, the devil 's resort to calling God, “the Enemy”. We are first introduced to this idea in the introduction on the first letter when Screwtape states that “The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle on to the Enemy 's ground” (2). Wormwood must find his opportunities by getting his patient to make unwise choices or let his emotions get the best of him. When the patient turns to

According to an article by Larry D. Harwood , “Lewis’s Screwtape Letters: the Ascetic Devil and Aesthetic God”, he states The Screwtape Letters portrays Lewis’s evil character and the principles of the “realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell” (2004). “In The Screwtape Letters Lewis portrays God as a lavish materialist affirming delight in a sensual as a part of being human. Lewis depicts the pleasures of sense...To Screwtape it appears that God took a gamble that not only makes little sense, but also appears to have come with costs to himself.” (Harwood, 2004). According to the article “Lewis's Screwtape Letters: the Ascetic Devil and the Aesthetic God” the mood of The Screwtape Letters is dusty, gritty as Lewis depicts Hell, due to the tone

As Ignatuis sees God present in our daily lives and our creator, so does Screwtape who pushes Wormwood to distort this image. For example, Screwtape advises, “keep him praying to it—to the thing he has made, not to the Person who has made him” (Lewis 18). Screwtape respects God—as seen by the capitalization of the word “Enemy”—and wants the patient to focus on the opposite of God’s virtues because God’s love can prove his existence. The demons must work around God and have their subjects focus on themselves not God. Furthermore, Wormwood has the subject work with God through God’s grace which protects subjects from the temptations of the devil. Screwtape goes on to criticize Wormwood’s ignorance when Wormwood, “allowed [the patient] two real positive Pleasures...[for] when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever” (64-65). God wants his followers to be wholly him and wholly themselves. It is loving God back when a person is him/herself. Screwtape realizes the faults in letting him act, but the subject only becomes more humble as Wormwood dismisses said advice. The third way in which the spirit works is a vision of love. Screwtape berates the Enemy’s philosophy of love that “[t]hings are to be many, yet somehow also one” (94). God claims to be the Father, the Son,

Screwtape wants to destroy the patient and his mother's relationship all together. They both already had a mutual annoyance for each other despite what screwtape was trying to do. First method he wants to use is keeping the patient's mind on himself. This will cause anger and annoyance towards his mother in doing so. This all relates towards logos by being factual evidence to cause anger. With pathos, C.S. Lewis wants to show emotion that the reader can relate to. He does this by showing tone in the story with the patient and his mother. “I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moments notice from impassioned prayer for a wife’s or son’s soul to beating or insulting the real wife or son without qualm.” This gives us the sense of how evil devils can be towards

In The Screwtape Letters, the topic of love appears continuously throughout the text. In different ways, it is seen that the theme of love is used. Love is commonly understood as a deep feeling for another but C.S describes God’s love as so much more. God’s love is unchanging and no matter what wrong is committed, he will continue to love. Whether it is seen in the patients love of Christ, his love of his mother, or his love for his romantic partner, they all point to one prominent thing, God. Screwtape and Wormwood continuously fight throughout the book to strip the patient of the things that he loves in his life to ultimately lead him away from the true source of love, which they call the enemy, Christ.

The implication of this quotation is that with the influence of alcohol, people tend to forget about their sorrows and troubles. I felt sympathetic for these groups of people. They can’t figure out what they want in life and indulge in dissipation.

Great authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Stephen King said that they both use alcohol as writing fuel. Stephen King even said he was scared to stop drinking because he thought he could only write best-seller novels while he was drunk. King obviously let alcohol take firm grasp of his career. F. Scott Fitzgerald did not let alcohol take such a hold on his career. He enjoyed being drunk, but knew it was a problem that had to be fixed. He says “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” while describing his drinking habit. Both Authors are great writing and both struggles with and addiction to