The Screwtape Letters

“By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result […] you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. 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.’”

Screwtape contrasts human reasoning with the everyday stream of sensory experiences that keep a person tied to the body, introducing the theme of Humans as Both Physical and Spiritual Beings. Lewis suggests that evil is much more likely to gain a foothold in someone who is preoccupied with their material reality than with the kind of intellectual exploration that might lead them to a belief in God; however, this dichotomy is not absolute, as there are times when bodily pleasure can also be a route to spiritual experience.

“Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things.”

Traditional Christian theology holds that God’s essence and God’s plan for human beings always involve mystery—there are parts of spiritual reality that are beyond human understanding. Part of the effect of sin, Lewis suggests, is to make it harder for humans to open themselves to what they don’t understand; thus, Screwtape advises Wormwood to exploit this tendency by keeping his subject focused on mundane realities.

“Above all do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defense against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he cannot touch and see. There have been sad cases among modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don’t let him get away from that invaluable ‘real life.’ But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk is the ‘the results of modern investigation.’”

Lewis here challenges the idea that religion and science are necessarily opposed, arguing that an appreciation of the latter can facilitate religious belief. By the time this book was written in 1942, scientists were well-versed in quantum physics, which explained the unseen interactions of matter and energy in the universe. Albert Einstein himself referred to the “mind of God” as the ultimate measure of what scientists are unable to explain. Screwtape does not want the young man anywhere near such speculation.

“Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour […] in every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.”

The devils play on the human tendency toward discontent and dissatisfaction. Once something loses its novelty, Screwtape suggests, it becomes much harder for a person to remain committed to it, which can benefit the devils both directly (by causing a person to abandon virtuous habits, like attending church) and indirectly (by encouraging impatience and unhappiness, which make people more susceptible to doubt and alienation from the spiritual path).

“The Enemy […] has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls his ‘free’ lovers and servants—‘sons’ is the word he uses […] desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them; He leaves them to ‘do it on their own.’”

This passage introduces one of the major themes in the novel: The Role of Reason and Free Will in Christian Life. God has allowed humanity to choose virtue or sin. Screwtape finds this perplexing. He assumes that God, like the Devil, would want to control his creatures and compel them to live a godly, holy life. Through this framing, Lewis challenges the idea that Christian life is entirely about following rules; it is evil, not good, that carries with it a restriction of one’s freedom.

“It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent him from praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that […] he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow […] his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself […] In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person […]”

This passage reflects the subtlety of Screwtape’s strategy. He is always interested in getting the young man to see himself as separate and better than his neighbors. Any lessening of genuine love for one’s neighbor, as Jesus taught, is a plus for the devils’ side, even if it outwardly manifests as Christian virtue. With this passage, Lewis anticipates the argument that people may do immoral things in the name of Christianity, suggesting a distinction between professing Christianity and actually attempting to live by its principles.

“It is funny how mortals always picture us putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”

The devils’ strategy is very often to distract humans from positive, spiritual thoughts and feelings about oneself and others. This is reflected above in a passage on scientific reasoning, which Screwtape warns might lead a person to consider the mystery of the universe and to think about its creator. More broadly, the idea that the devils’ “best work” is not to corrupt humanity per se but simply to encourage humans’ bad habits clarifies the novel’s focus: Though framed as a conversation between demons, it is primarily interested in good and evil as elements of human experience.

“Let us therefore think rather how to use, than how to enjoy, this European war […] We may hope for a great deal of cruelty and unchastity. But, if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the Enemy […]”

To the less experienced tempter Wormwood, a major war is an automatic win for the devils’ camp. People are bound to act badly when threatened with death and injury. They will inevitably become more self-centered and less concerned with others—even to the point of killing their “neighbors” to survive. Screwtape, with his more nuanced perspective, realizes that many people will turn to God in times of crisis, so a war is not automatically to the devils’ advantage.

“We want him to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled up with contradictory pictures of the future […] There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

This is a case where the devils hope that fear overcomes love. In the extreme conditions of wartime, people become more concerned with survival. They focus on what dangers lie ahead and how to protect themselves. The devils wish to play on this state of fear to create selfishness and separation that trumps love of neighbor.

“In all activities which favour our cause, encourage the patient to be unself-conscious and to concentrate on the object, but in all activities favourable to the Enemy bend his mind back on itself. Let an insult or a woman’s body so fix his attention outward that he does not reflect ‘I am now entering the state called Anger—or the state called Lust.’ Contrariwise let the reflection ‘my feelings are now growing more devout or more charitable’ so fix his attention inward that he no longer looks beyond himself to see our Enemy or his own neighbours.”

This passage again reflects the subtlety of Screwtape’s temptation strategies. He wants to win either way, with the person behaving from unconscious habit and with the person examining his inner life.

“He really does want to fill the universe with loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose […] wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become our food; he wants servants who can finally become sons […] We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.”

Through Screwtape, Lewis continues to develop his claims about human free will and its relationship to God. Having the freedom to choose does not mean that all choices are “correct”; some lead to God while others lead to Hell. Notably, however, each of these choices manifests in terms of greater or lesser freedom, with those who “freely conform” to God’s will becoming God’s children while those who flout it become akin to domesticated animals and finally food.

“I have always found that the trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex […] the attack has a much better chance of success when the man’s whole inner world is drab and cold and empty […] the trough sexuality is subtly different in quality from that of the peak—much less likely to lead to the milk and water phenomenon which humans call ‘being in love,’ and more easily drawn into perversions.”

Screwtape’s theory of “undulation” is key to the novel’s elaboration of humans’ dual nature; because humans are part physical, they cannot maintain a spiritual focus indefinitely. In these “trough” periods, Screwtape argues they are much more likely to seek excitement. This applies well to temptations toward sexual sin and is therefore an opportunity for the devils to influence the young man.

“A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man’s damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can be treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour.”

Screwtape suggests that humans often write off sinful behavior by explaining it treating it as a joke. Beyond this immediate point, the passage suggests that a habitually ironic attitude virtually precludes faith by ensuring they never approach anything with sincerity.

“It does not matter how small the sins are provided their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

Screwtape favors the gradual approach to temptation. He likes to start small, as evidenced by his approach to temptation during a long marriage. This passage is key to elucidating the differences between Christian morality and other moral systems readers may have encountered. Even an action that seems trivial can be sinful if it draws the person who does it away from God. Conversely, even a person who has done egregiously immoral things is potentially redeemable.

“I would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin […] the man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, without caring two-pence for what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.”

The devils wish to alienate people from life—specifically, from anything that absorbs a person to the extent that they lose themselves in it, as this state is the antithesis of prideful self-love.

“It is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love—a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours. For we must never forget what is the most repellant and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created.”

In Christian theology, God is a god of love. While Christianity also stresses humility, Lewis here distinguishes this from self-hatred; indeed, one result of the selfless love for God and neighbor is self-love, but self-love that is disinterested. The devils never want people to realize how God’s plan works to their ultimate benefit.

“Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future […] fear, lust, avarice, and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust is an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the process […] contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward.”

Screwtape here suggests a connection between godliness and immersion in the present—the only time when one experiences a sense of the eternal. The devils’ province is therefore the future, where selfish wishes and fantasies can be played out. One corollary of the idea Screwtape articulates is that Christianity does not, as some non-Christians believe, view bodily pleasure itself as sinful; rather, it is the emotions that potentially surround it that may do spiritual harm. In making this distinction, Lewis again seeks to clarify misconceptions surrounding Christianity.

“But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern […] because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what is put before her, she never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others.”

Screwtape defines “gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess.” Because of the popular association of gluttony with overindulgence, people striving to lead a Christian life will probably have enough sense to avoid “gluttony of Excess.” Once again, however, Lewis stresses the attitude behind the sin rather than the act itself. The demanding and critical version of gluttony can still pose a trap by creating the alienation and dislike of one’s neighbors that the devils are always trying to promote.

“The whole philosophy of Hell rests on the recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is not another self. My good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains the other loses.”

This is a simple and direct description of the attitude of selfishness that the devils wish to promote in the young man. “I win; you lose” is exactly the point of view that favors the devils’ plan, but it also limits them in key ways, as they assume everyone must be as selfish as they are.

“At the present moment, as the full impact of the war draws nearer and his worldly hopes take a proportionately lower place in his mind, full of his defense work, full of the girl, forced to attend to his neighbors more than he has ever done before and liking it more than he expected, ‘taken out of himself’ as the humans say, and daily increasing his dependence on the Enemy, he will almost certainly be lost to us if he is killed tonight. This is so obvious that I am ashamed to write it.”

This foreshadows the young man’s death in the air raid and his journey to heaven. He is in love with a moral woman. He is acting out of selflessness in his wartime duties. He is ready for the death that is coming, and Heaven is ready to receive him.

“But hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful—horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate. And Hatred is also a great anodyne for shame. To make a deep wound in his charity, you should therefore first defeat his courage.”

Screwtape here comments on how people respond to danger, as in war, arguing that the very fact that fear is so unpleasant to experience makes it a useful gateway to other sins. In particular, he suggests that anger and hatred often arise from fear.

“But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not ‘Who are you?’ but ‘So it was you all the time.’ […] Only you were left outside.”

This is a partial description of the young man’s experience of heavenly presence after he dies in the bombing. Almost immediately, the young man also meets “Him,” the capitalization of which indicates God himself. This passage clarifies the devils’ motivations for tempting humans; having fallen from Heaven, they deeply envy humanity’s ability to enter it.

“For ‘democracy’ or the ‘democratic spirit’ (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, morally flaccid from lack of discipline in youth, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and soft from lifelong pampering.”

Screwtape distinguishes between democracy as a political system and a democratic spirit that insists that everyone is equal in every respect. The latter produces, from the senior devil’s point of view, excellent opportunities to lead people astray, as no one has ever been encouraged to develop their talents for fear of standing out from the crowd. If they cannot think for themselves, they will be more easily tempted.