This month (February) marks the 80th Anniversary of the book version of The Screwtape Letters (it had come out in weekly installments a year before. In honor of this landmark event, I present the following “profile” that is based on a project I’m working on to summarize all of Lewis’ books this way.
| Title | |
| Published | February 9, 1942 |
| Main Audience | Upper teens to adults |
| Short Summary | The original book presents an imaginative series of letters from a senior demon (Screwtape) to his younger nephew (Wormwood) about how to be a successful tempter. Wormwood is on his first assignment and his patient is a somewhat average male of the 1940s (when Lewis wrote the material). The patient is never given a name, but we are told he is single and might have to serve in the military. Screwtape gives a variety of advice to Wormwood (which is often ignored) about how to make his victim miserable and bring his soul to hell. |
| Original Publisher | Geoffrey Bles |
| AKA or Potential Titles | Lewis suggested in a letter to his brother the title “As One Devil to Another.”[1] |
| Background | In July 1940, during a church service, the idea for a series of letters “from an elderly retired devil to a young devil”[2] came to Lewis. He also reports he had recently heard a speech by Adolf Hitler on the radio and was surprised at how convincing it was.[3] Hitler presented England as the aggressor and Germany as a victim. Even though Lewis never made a connection between Hitler and Screwtape, it is interesting that the two events are mentioned in the same letter to his brother. Lewis began writing the letters before the end of 1940 and they were released serially in 1941 (once a week) in The Guardian (an Anglican newspaper that ended publication in 1951). |
| Strengths | Being such a short book, many pick it up (as Lewis noted in the second preface) and are exposed to deep spiritual truths while laughing at the humorous presentation of how temptation might work from a devil’s perspective. |
| Weakness | One must be careful to not read too much into the material. That is, remembering the letters are fictional, one should not rely on them to understand Lewis’ complete perspective on the various topics he addresses. |
| Example Quotes |
“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. (Preface) “There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite…Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.” (1961 Preface) “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.” (Letter 4) “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s [God’s] ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours.” (Letter 9) “Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.” (Letter 28) |
| Themes Also Found In | The essay “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (later included in some editions of The Screwtape Letters) provides the closest thing to the book. However, the variety of topics the senior demon mentioned is addressed more fully in other material by Lewis. For example, while prayer is mentioned in nine of the letters, Lewis writes about prayer in Mere Christianity and Letters to Malcolm as well as in several essays that are collected in a few places. For example, “The Efficacy of Prayer” in The World’s Last Night and “Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without an Answer” in Christian Reflections. |
| Also Worth Noting | God is always referred to as “the Enemy” and Satan called “Our Father,” or “Our Father Below.” This is the first book that gained Lewis international fame. It was published a year later in the United States (1943) and Lewis landed on the cover of Time (in 1947) because of its popularity. |
| Critical Works on the Book | In 2013 The Screwtape Letters: Annotated Edition was published with notes from Paul McCusker (creator of Adventures in Odyssey). There are a number of study guides devoted to The Screwtape Letters, the first was a brief one included in the 1982 edition written by Walter Hooper and Owen Barfield. My own enhanced guide to this classic is called C.S. Lewis Goes to Hell. A free 20-page sample is available via the publisher’s webpage. Also of interest is material from Lewis scholar Brenton Dickieson on “A Cosmic Shift in The Screwtape Letters.” It links Screwtape to the trilogy of books featuring the main character Ransom that began with Out of the Silent Planet.[4] |
[1] The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2. Pg. 426 {July 20, 1940]
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Published in Mythlore, Vol. 39 : No. 1. Available at https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol39/iss1/1/