Let's talk Screwtape Letters

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C.S. Lewis has been a long time favorite of mine. I just started reading (again) his Scretape Letters and find the book amusing, thought provoking and very timely. For those not familiar, it consists of a series of letters from a senior devil to his apprentice on how the human can be tempted and coerced away from religion and God.
The book was written in 1940-41 but has lost nothing of its relevance.
Since the devil is not brought up much these days, this book might be just the ticket.
Let’s talk Screwtape.
 
My dear Wormwood…

“We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the alter of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”​

 
I loved this book. Loaned it my brother and never got it back! Thanks for the reminder!
 
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, averice, lust and ambition look ahead.” (Letter XV)
 
A good one on ownership:

The humans are always putting up claims to ownership…Much of modern resistance to chastity [here you can insert ‘support for abortion’] comes from man’s [or woman’s] belief that they “own” their bodies…
 
Yes it was a good read it demonstrated the pedity and vindictive job demons have.
 
An important influence of reason towards compelling me to cling to Jesus for seeking faith and resistance to manipulation.

Truly a brilliant masterpiece!
 
I found it difficult to read, because the reader is asked to assume a disposition of ill-will to identify with the demons.
In any book you want to identify with the characters…to get into their heads.
In this case that endeavor was disturbing for me.

So I think the book effectively accomplishes it’s mission.
 
From the prologue:

“Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years’ study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. “My heart”— I need no other’s— “showeth me the wickedness of the ungodly.””

C.S. Lewis
 
Do you think that the purpose is to make the reader identify with the demons, or to identify with their victim that they spend the entire book discussing?

The assault is the same, and the purpose is the same, even though the details change on an individual basis.

So by recognizing, “Aha, they’re talking about this guy who lived in a totally different country, during a totally different time period—!” but also, “Aha, but the strategy is the same as it relates to me—!” it helps people look at an abstract Truth, and apply it concretely to their own situations.
 
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midori said:
Do you think that the purpose is to make the reader identify with the demons, or to identify with their victim that they spend the entire book discussing?

The assault is the same, and the purpose is the same, even though the details change on an individual basis.

So by recognizing, “Aha, they’re talking about this guy who lived in a totally different country, during a totally different time period—!” but also, “Aha, but the strategy is the same as it relates to me—!” it helps people look at an abstract Truth, and apply it concretely to their own situations.
Click to expand...
Correct, you’d like to identify with all of the characters in a book and that identification process opens up self discovery.
Through identification…my own identity attains clarity.
 
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Sometimes on my Amazon reviews, I adopt the persona of Treaclegloch: a critic-reviewer for The Infernal Herald, under the category “Useful Idiots”. Yep, I’m doing a blatant Screwtape, with all the self-serving, smug snarkiness I can project in going after (mostly) the radical-progressive wing of Catholicism, though my latest and longest Treaclegloch review went after Alexander Hislop’s 19th C anti-Catholic tome,. The Two Babylons…

I’m sorry I haven’t figured out how to post a link with my cheap phone, but on Amazon, search the 1 🌟 reviews for Hislop’s book, as well as Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma, or Gary Wills’ Priests? A Failed Tradition and scroll all the way to the beginning of my reviews (blantant plug).
 
“A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”

Screwtape
 
“We [the devil] want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, not happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.” (letter XV)
 
John Cleese of Monty Python did a truly epic audio book recording of Screwtape letters. If you like audio books, well, his reading of it is brilliant. Great book.
 
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