The Screwtape Letters Analysis

Lewis's book, The Screwtape Letters, has shown me many challenges in which I go through in my everyday life. These challenge levels range from simple stuff that can just happen at my house to serious stuff outside in the world. One of the more simple challenges that this book provides insight to, occurs in chapter three. That chapter focuses on something as simple as making your mother upset. It goes into depth about how he can talk or act a certain way to make her upset with him. In doing this, Screwtape and Wormwood want the human to become isolated from his mom. One of the more serious challenges that is featured in the book is the continual evaluation of the Church and Christianity. The chapters dealing with these issues are chapters one, two, four, and eight. All of these chapters selected had issues or evaluations dealing with the Church or Christianity in a negative

Have you ever wondered how demons try and lead us away from God and begin to sin? In the Screwtape Letters C.S Lewis shows us how a demon named Screwtape guides his nephew Wormwood on how to make sure their “patient” stays away from Christianity. The Screwtape Letters is an Epistolary novel that was written during World War II. In this novel God is considered “The Enemy” and Satan is “Our Father.” The main characters in this novel are Wormwood, Screwtape, and the patient. Screwtape is a demon who writes his nephew Wormwood from hell. Screwtape teaches his nephew the different steps of keeping his “patient” away from God. Humans are called patients by demons because they are trying to lead humans away from God. In this novel we don’t really

Throughout the story, the Misfit is constantly in denial about the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, and the necessity of

The author helps us to understand exactly who our enemy is and who our enemy is not. Our enemy is not flesh and blood but, “principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places”. People are often used by demonic spirits to act in adverse ways. We must never target people as our foes. The enemy would love to have us overlook him and turn on one another. Our brothers and sisters are not who we should fight. It is the spirit behind them using them to distract us into doing something we will later regret.

Throughout the document, Mather is constantly depicting the Devil and spirits as very real, tangible enemies (e.g. descriptions of “invisible hands” and unexplained supernatural happenings), that were slowly infecting the Christian

Inside his mind, he finds all these evil from his thoughts that he had repressed and locked away all these years cause of his strict religious beliefs. The evil is represented by a devil he met in his unconscious mind. The devil holds in his hands a staff that resembles a serpent is similar to the story of Adam and Eve where the snake leads them away from being the purest of man and in Young Goodman Brown where the devil with the serpent staff leads Brown deeper into the forest. All his thoughts that were considered wrong by his religion were repressed and forgotten. These thoughts which he thought were forgotten are actually locked deep into the “forest” part of his mind and the opening of that door will only take a matter of time before the mind can’t take anymore. Once the door creaks open from the pressure of the thoughts, the person becomes hysterical unless a method of mental solution provided in Freud theory is utilized. Proven by Sigmund Freud, hysteria is not at all physical and is indeed a mental condition.

In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis proposes a dialog between an experienced devil and a young inexperienced devil. We only get to read letters from the senior, Screwtape, to the junior, Wormwood. In these letters we overhear how Wormwood’s first assignment is going, what tempting strategies he should try, and what might happen to him if he fails. Screwtape comes across cordial in all his letters, but just beneath his tone he seems to dislike his young mentee. In every letter, Screwtape belittles Wormwood in some way or another, and by the end we hear Screwtape’s outright anger and outrage at Wormwood’s failure when his patient dies a Christian. Lewis’ style of writing equips me to better recognise Satin’s subtle deceptions, and does not make

“The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged diversity are excellent campaigning weather.” Screwtape wished to drag out the Christian’s life and turn it into a purposeless, repeating roll-play. He wanted to slowly and despairingly tear the Christian from God and so tear him from the only true hope and life and joy there is in this world. Do not be alarmed, though, because God is stronger that the demons and He, “having oddly destined these mere animals to life in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else.” Screwtape admits that God insures his children a place in his forever home and an everlasting joy. Additionally, Screwtape refers to humans as “mere animals.” God created us in His image, which sets us apart from the animals. Screwtape therefore was trying to degrade humankind, to lower us, and how can any of us, humans, feel sympathy for one who so hates us

The patient could have many jobs but I see him as a writer. There are many times that screwtape talks about how smart he is. Writers usually know a lot in what they write about. In the first chapter Screwtape says “Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false", but as "academic" or "practical", "outworn" or "contemporary”, "conventional" or "ruthless". Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.” (chapter 1 first paragraph) This shows that the patient does know his stuff and thinks through everything. I see him as a writer for science and philosophy books. These people could be professors and the patient could have been a professor before since he knows so much about life. The patient's job during the war was a defence worker (ch. 28, p154). This defence work could be helping build barricades in roads and planning where to strategically place the barriers. Since I saw him as a writer, I see it fitting that he is a defence worker because a smaller man would not be able to fight in the

Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, is an interesting novel containing the interaction between a devil named Screwtape and his young nephew Wormwood. The book is comprised of letters corresponding between the two devils. Screwtape is a senior devil and is tasked as a mentor to his less experienced nephew. Screwtape instructs Wormwood on how to tempt a new Christian, or "patient". He suggest many different intricate ways of using human emotions, thoughts, and weaknesses to tempt their faith, and keep them from the kingdom of heaven. The ultimate goal to attain humans for their master in hell. Wormwood is at first encouraged by his uncle Screwtape, but is later criticized because he can't control his patient, and fails at keeping him from church.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is a set of letters written by the demon Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood is relatively new at being a demon and throughout the letters, Screwtape both responds to the letters that Wormwood sends him and provides Wormwood with advice about how best to tempt the man Wormwood is in charge of away from the Enemy, God. Although Lewis only gives the reader one side of this correspondence between uncle and nephew, Screwtape’s response at the beginning of each letter is usually enough to understand what Wormwood’s letter contained. It appears as if Wormwood had only recently become a Tempter as opposed to his uncle, Screwtape, who had surpassed the role of Tempter and now occupied an administrative role.

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

Love is a very impactful thing. The fact that the Patient has great love for his mother stands out as a problem for Wormwood and Screwtape. These two accomplices believe that if they strip the patient of all sources of love that he will turn away from God. Wormwood is provided with a list filled with details on how he can turn the patient’s love into anger and annoyance towards his mother. One way that they attempt to do this is by distorting the patient’s prayers into prayers

According to Screwtape that question has been answered by the “High Command.” He says that for the moment their policy is to conceal themselves from their patients. Screwtape introduces a dilemma. “When humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics.” Obliviously this situation has become a big problem for demons like Screwtape. In a human doesn’t believe that a demon is causing them pain and suffering, then the demon doesn’t take as much pleasure for doing something. If I do something good I know that I would like to be rewarded or acknowledged for something even if that is not having the Servants heart that God wants us to have. On the flipside if a person knew there was a demon doing all of these terrible and unthinkable things to them, they would know that all bad things would come from demons. It is like a surprise birthday party. If you know that your good group of friends is throwing you a surprise party, you won’t enjoy it as much if you had no idea about it. What I want to know is why Wormword would want to reveal himself to his patient? I really cant figure out any positives about it besides, the person knowing who is ruining their life is a

Christianity is mostly closely associated with Jesus Christ, its founder and premier exorcists. Out of all of Jesus’ healing one-fourth of them dealt with Exorcism and there are at least 26 references to exorcisms preformed by Jesus in the New Testament. Through out the Gospel many accounts of Jesus performing exorcists are documented in the Gospel by his apostles (Bancroft.) The first accounts of Jesus performing types of exorcisms comes from Mathew 4: 24. Matthew writes that Jesus cured all the people who were possessed, lunatics, and paralytic. This also integrates the idea that exorcism is not just about free an individual from demonic possession, but also free them of mental and physical diseases as well. In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus casts out multiple demons named Legion out of man from Gerasenes, who would cry all night and bruise himself with stones, into a herd of pigs who than ran off a cliff to their own demise (Mark 5: 1-20). Satan does not act alone when he posses an individual, he is working with several evil spirits such as lust, hate, destruction, , anger, anxiety, desperation, suicide, revenge death and torment. Conversely Exorcism is not always seen as a negative experience. In Acts 16: 16, It is told of a women possessed by an oracular spirit, literally a python spirit of whom was the guardian of Delphic oracles. In