The Screwtape Letters, written by C.S. Lewis, published in 1942, is a book told in the form of letters by an evil spirit named Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood (a tempter), on how to cause his “Patient” to err by having him make blunders, errors, and mistakes, leading him down the path to where all fallen spirits are. It’s not a conventional book in which there is a clear beginning, middle, end, and for readers expecting that structure, it will take some getting used to, since it is written like a series of short essays where each chapter focuses on a particular theme such as truth, virtue, and the prayer life of the “Patient.”
One must also get used to how everything is framed, since heaven is where Screwtape doesn’t want Wormwood’s Patient to end up. One must think in terms of opposites as one reads this, because Screwtape views everything from the side of evil. Toward the end of the book, though we don’t read any of Wormwood’s letters, we get a sense of what he wrote based on Screwtape’s responses regarding the war in Europe (World War II, undoubtedly), and how fear, courage, etc., are like spiritual battlegrounds for the “Patient.”
Once I got used to the format of this book, I began to appreciate each chapter for the theme it tackled, and later in the book, the “Patient” seemed to be evading Wormwood’s deceptions and tactics, which Screwtape started getting annoyed with. It is clear that the “Patient” isn’t aware of Wormwood at all, since he is an evil spirit, and the way the story is framed is as if Screwtape and Wormwood worked in some unseen office building where they would come and go and then report back to after meddling with the world.
The Screwtape Letters isn’t a fantasy or narrative book in the traditional sense, but for readers interested in C.S. Lewis’s work, it covers moral themes that are addressed in a kind of satirical way about how an evil spirit might think if it were to convince its “Patient” toward a fallen path.
Fallton Havenstonne 