This post is a book review of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. To track and understand what Lewis wrote from the perspective of Screwtape in his correspondence to Wormwood, I wrote these summaries in the way that Lewis cast Screwtape. Yet, in the same tone, meaning, voice, and manner to get a slight glimpse of what he had to say. Letter after letter, these are summaries as a review method to understand how they work together and what they intend to do to the reader. This is a role play by prose to get a sense of disgust and alarm that we are meant to understand. The consistent thread among all Screwtape’s letters to Wormwood constitutes areas of attack on the whole person. Whether toward virtue, interests, or values, every area of a person’s life is subject to constant animosity and relentless degradation until final and total separation from God.
SUMMARY OF CORRESPONDENCE
Concerning efforts to secure the damnation of a young man, these are letters from uncle Screwtape to Wormwood outlined for summary understanding. Together, they represent the courses of action between an old devil Screwtape and his young demonic protégé, Wormwood. Following C.S. Lewis’s rationale (and satire) concerning the alarming methods and intentions of adversarial efforts of spiritual enemies, we learn what we’re up against from among Screwtape’s letters.
MACHINATIONS
Erratum 1:
Keep him from science and the ability or interest of proper season. He must remain preoccupied with the ordinary. Your job is to keep him focused on “real life.”
Erratum 2:
On the displeasing news that he becomes a Christian, keep him entangled in improper habits and values as long as possible to impede his spiritual growth. While continuing to think he is doing his church a favor by attending services, his mind must remain occupied with comparisons between what is observed among church congregants and how he thinks church members should be.
Erratum 3:
It is of utmost importance that the relationship between the young man and his mother is a constant series of annoyances. The domestic life of family must be aggravating even in the slightest way possible, but with pin-prick persistence in tone, mannerisms, and words chosen during conversation that does subtle yet cumulative harm. Develop circumstances in which offense and grievance are paramount among family members at the slightest interaction. Pay more attention to the young man’s concern about the spiritual condition of the mother as he is focused on the condition of the soul and sins of the past. If the young man should begin to guide his mother in prayer, or spiritual development, make sure that the effort is fruitless. If he is to pray for his mother, his prayers are to be on the grounds of uniformed and reckless concern.
Erratum 4:
It’s best to keep the young man, the patient, from praying. However, if prayer is to occur, it must be kept inward, informal, and unregularized. Any cognitive effort during prayer shall not be present within the patient, but a vague sense of devotion shall be the main course of prayer. It is unacceptable for the patient to pray out loud or on his knees. Prayer is to be superficial as it is among those very far advanced in the Enemy’s service. As this effort continues, keep the patient focused on their own minds and direct their gaze elsewhere from any service to the Enemy. Try to stimulate feelings within the patient to misdirect his intention. Look into the patient’s mind to find as much dirt as possible while he is praying and focused on God. Finally, keep the patient praying to the object through which his imagination is anchored.
Erratum 5:
The anguish of a human soul is nothing to be exuberant about. Don’t let it go to your head. If you trap the human soul and eternally secure his fate forever, the patient will belong to you while he is in despair, horror, and astonishment. To undermine faith and the development of virtues, it is necessary to render a complete account of the patient’s reactions to the war in Europe about to get underway. Do your best to make the patient an extreme patriot or ardent pacifist, as humans undergo extreme suffering in service of your father below.
Erratum 6:
It is desirable to have the patient in a continuous or periodic state of anxiety and uncertainty. Blocking a human’s mind against the Enemy is of concern as there’s an effort to preoccupy what will happen to him. The Enemy wants the patient to be concerned about what he does and not what he thinks about himself or his state of mind. In the midst of mental suffering, direct the patient’s thoughts and prayers upon himself where he has no interest in directing his attention upon the Enemy or others. Direct the patient’s concentration and mind to the object and circumstances and never upon the Enemy or others.
If the patient does happen to have concern and anguish about the state of society, world affairs, or the war, direct the malice of the patient to those around him. Suppose he should develop compassion or empathy toward people. In that case, they are to be directed to people at a distance among people unknown. Inflamed hatred of immediate surroundings among neighbors begins to transfer to family, friends, fellow students, and the patient’s employer. Distant care and empathy remain imaginary.
Erratum 7:
It is not acceptable to reveal your existence to the patient. The father below does not permit it. If the patient begins to wonder about it, direct his thoughts and passions elsewhere by distraction and suggestive interests. Keep the patient confused and oblivious to the existence of spirits, demons, and devils where no suspicion is permitted to surface. Suggest anything contradictory to the existence of dark influences. Redirect attention to base interest concerning cravings, lusts, and passions. Passivism or patriotism taken to heightened interest can become a source of workable influence on the spiritual demise of the patient. Hatred and pride must be permitted to form and fester where the patient continues to abide by it with people of common interest. Cliques within the church that keep it small with no outreach due to its insular posture against the more immediate community help to shunt access to relief for spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. So long as the patient is more concerned about his passions rather than his spiritual formation, the sacraments, prayer, scripture, charity, and devotion to the Enemy, he remains in the realm of the father below.
Erratum 8:
Humans are both flesh and spirit, so their interests and imaginations continually change. It is expected that the patient will have seasons of spiritual ups and downs during the course of life. Peaks and valleys of spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical well-being are characteristic of people who are devoted to the Enemy. Intervals of vacant feelings, hopes, and desires will be interspersed with joy, faith, and love. Periods of dry existence are certain. So during these periods, the Enemy will likely use the circumstances for the betterment of the patient. Determine what the Enemy is doing, and make it your efforts to do the opposite. The Enemy relies on hard times to take permanent possession of those He loves. As this is a direct conflict of interest, people to us are cattle who serve as spiritual food. As they are captured and enslaved, they abide by the will of the father below and all his constituents.
It is understood that the Enemy will not override people’s will to assimilate them as He desires them to be one with Him by their choices. By sovereign intent, He will, at times, make His presence known, which will help the patient to overcome temptations with encouragement, peace, and emotional delight in the Enemy. So when the Enemy withdraws from the patient for him to stand on his own, the more temptation you direct toward him, the better. If the Enemy is served and obeyed when the patient is distant or convinced he is forsaken, He is pleased, and that is when significant damage is done to the interests of the father below.
Erratum 9:
During the valleys of spiritual growth, the best areas of temptation are about the sensuality of the patient. When a person’s life is empty and without warmth or the color of life, that is drawn into perversion and disappointing sexuality. Any form of physical defilement is where the temptation for pleasure is focused. Capture the person’s soul through his or her own interests, especially through periods of mental or spiritual dryness. This will lead to doubt about spiritual matters and religion and that it is only helpful to a point. Your efforts at deception would involve terms and accusations that characterize periods of doubt as phases of life. Reason, intellect, and thought were adversaries during this time, whereas platitudes and seeds sown as catchphrases and terminology of popular social interests arose as the paramount concern. Keep the patient’s mind off of notions of true and false with gradations and nuances of meaning.
Erratum 10:
The vanity of the patient is of considerable use. In the areas of social, intellectual, cultural, and sexual interest, the patient can betray who he really is, and by doing so often and long enough, he might become what he pretends to be. The patient’s life among circles of friends who are different from who he really is (his values, capabilities, understanding, station in life) can become an entanglement that is difficult to get free from. Here, it is useful to attack the patient’s virtues or even his wonder about what they are. Then feed this vanity and do not let the patient think of his friends as circles to which he pretends to be someone he is not. With precipitous reinforcement, the patient will, under false pretenses and treachery, come to feel satisfied with the neglect of himself, his mother, and those responsibilities others rely on.
Erratum 11:
Laughter and joy are not useful to the objectives before you. Nor is music with harmony and rhythm. As fun is associated with joy, it is an undesirable artifact of human existence. It promotes virtues that work against the objectives of what you’re set to do. Laughter, fun, and joy turned in on itself with perverse intent is a course of action that is the better way to go.
Erratum 12:
As the patient is pressed to error and spiritual undoing, make him imagine that all his choices are revokable. He is allowed to retain the habits of a Christian externally, but his spiritual state must remain the same without recognizing sin. Do not allow genuine repentance to develop and inhibit the patient’s desire and interest in the Enemy. Waste his time because the gradual and precipitous slide into Hell is more certain with enough care and attention to detail. Be not as concerned about outright grievous sins, but keep him from doing anything. While efforts are directed to distractions from his purpose, you are to seek numbness of the heart with vanity, flippancy, and habits. Separate the patient from the Enemy into nothing.
Erratum 13:
Simple pleasures that positively affect a person’s faith are disastrous to the cause. It is not acceptable to permit the patient to be satisfied in what makes him sufficiently refreshed or restored, whether of the heart, mind, or spirit. The patient is instead to want the best of anything that appeals to the appetite, contrary to what leads to both repentance and active obedience to the Enemy. The patient can undergo a change of mind or a change of heart, but he must not do anything about it.
Erratum 14:
Make the patient proud. Even if incrementally and conceal the end result of humility. Make him value an opinion for some quality other than Truth. Dishonesty and false belief about a counterfeit virtue as something more prized. Run interference to the Enemy and all His intentions. It is imperative to destroy any self-perceived notion of glorious and excellent things where the desire for consistent attention to the Enemy’s interests is well-served. Virtues that enable Godly self-love that positively affects neighbors is the harm done to the cause.
Erratum 15:
Keep the patient worried. Live in the future or the past, but not the present or the eternal. However, it is better to focus on the future to stir and perpetuate worry. The future is the least like eternity. Nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Fear, lust, avarice, and ambition have interrelated temporality. The sin that is conceived and born happens before it is committed. Conversely, if in the present, the patient’s view and confidence about the future is a source of peace and contentment, that is an area to attack.
Erratum 16:
As a recent convert, it is advisable to send the patient to various churches if he should become dissatisfied with his existing fellowship. Even if the patient is faithful to a church for a long while, it is time and effort well spent to stir up division among congregants and the leadership. Even if the patient were to attend other churches nearby, they practice their faith in an abundance of error. The teaching is mainly erroneous and limited, whereby the spiritual development of congregants is stunted no matter where he goes.
Erratum 17:
Press in on a deadened conscience about gluttony as that is to be concentrated on delicacy and not only excess. Gluttony of this sort is a sensuality that leads to other areas of damage to the soul. It also has a devastating effect on social and interpersonal relationships concerning the patient as he must get exactly what he wants no matter how small or the grief it causes others. While it might appear that the patient is practicing temperance, in reality, the opposite happens on another scale. The stomach represents the appetite for sensual pleasure as it translates to incremental want beyond the interests of others.
Erratum 18:
Marrying for any other reason than love, such as procreation, is to culture a cynical view of what it means to become one flesh for a mutually inward purpose: the Enemy demands either monogamy or complete abstinence. There is a sense of entitlement among those who wish to marry that there must be love that brings them together as the exclusive reason to which they could marry. As it is naturally evident, the method of reproduction comes through copulation between a man and a woman. Yet, the union between them is a physical representation of the members of the three as God. As a couple marries and comes together as one flesh, they represent the tri-unity of the Creator. So as couples do not have mutual feelings of affection and love to give cause for marriage, even while they’re a suitable fit for one another to grow in a fruitful and loving relationship, there is a viable opening to keep any such couple separated.
Erratum 19:
The idea that the Enemy loves people is an impossible proposition. Nevertheless, it is worth your time and effort to make the patient believe that love is both intrinsically meritorious and irresistible if your patient is gullible. Determine what type of man is the point of concentration to which your project seals him in final and eternal condemnation. If he is proud, lead him to asceticism, where the body is disconnected from humanized and physical intimacy. These conditions can set the groundwork for adultery, suicide, and worse. At the very least, please do your best to ensure the patient marries someone you identify from the local community who would make it impossible for him to live out his faith.
Erratum 20:
If it’s impossible to persuade the patient that chastity is unhealthy, it then becomes a priority to bring him into a marriage unsuitable to him and his faith. The preference is to perpetuate the common belief that the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it, but there are extenuating circumstances here. If the only option is to make the patient fall in love with a woman, two conditions must follow. You must select one of two types of women. An exceedingly arrogant woman or an excessively withdrawn and cowardly female with a heightened form of feminity will do. In either instance, the likelihood of bearing children is reduced to satisfy our mutual interests.
Erratum 21:
You must ensure that the patient, who is devoted to the Enemy, believes that all his days and hours are exclusively his time. Cultivate within the patient a sense of ownership of time and what he believes rightfully belongs to him.
Erratum 22:
[ Letter 22 from Screwtape to Wormwood was a complete meltdown. Upon learning that the patient has come to a loving relationship with a Godly woman full of the Spirit, with virtue, peace, and grace, Screwtape flies off into a tirade with insults directed at everyone around him. The likeness of Christ within her and the echoes of Heaven in their home set him in a verbal rage when suddenly he is transformed into a centipede (which is reportedly a transformation that arrives from the inner self). Screwtape attributes the unexpected yet periodic shape change to an act of God. As his letter to Wormwood is interrupted, Screwtape’s undersecretary “Toadpipe” takes dictation to finish the written message to Wormwood. Toadpipe signed the letter, For his Abysmal Sublimity Undersecretary Screwtape, TE, BS, Etc. ].
Erratum 23:
While it becomes possible and certain that spirituality cannot be removed from the patient, it becomes necessary to corrupt it. To do that, you must inject a “historical Jesus” centered on interest involving liberalism, humanitarian efforts, Marxism, and social justice. This is to direct people’s devotion off of Jesus and onto other pursuits and interests. Jesus must become just a great moral teacher only. To further corrupt spirituality, the devotional life of people must be destroyed. The root of corruption grows into allowing people to form their political, professional, social, and personal lives for advancement and gain. Efforts toward spiritual revival for the betterment of society are an empty course of practice as the Enemy will not stand for being leveraged in this way. So, this is what you must specifically do in an effort to corrupt the spiritual development of the patient and the believers around him. Even if the effort is to develop a smaller piece of a false and counterfeit form of service and devotion, that is time and energy well spent.
Erratum 24:
[As Wormwood is in charge of the young man’s sought-after demise (the patient), another demonic entity has dark spiritual authority over the young woman the patient has grown to love. Screwtape writes further to Wormwood about correspondence with Slumtrimpet, the dark authority in charge of the malevolence against the young woman.]
As it is observed that the patient is introduced to other believers, he is naturally interested in learning more to grow spiritually. The young girl, in her innocence, could be useful in this regard. As she has an ability to recognize what is authentic and counterfeit, or imitation, this can be made to influence the patient into hideous Spiritual Pride. As the patient learns from more spiritually mature believers, he is to be made that his learning is his own. He earned what he has come to understand, and he has come into a stature where he now belongs to ‘his people.’ He then turns from segments of society as they are beneath him or separate, as they are no longer entertaining or of value. Making the patient believe that by his interpersonal circles, formed through his delight in the young woman, he will come to know his fellowship as “his people.” He must begin to feel entitled to people he believes are “his” people as a unique set and the right kind of people. Sinful social vanity is one thing, but Spiritual Pride is another, and you will want to concentrate on the latter.
Erratum 25:
It is also a particular desire to associate Christianity with some other corresponding interest as an attached and interdependent concern of the faith. Christianity and social justice, Christianity and tradition, Christianity and prosperity, Christianity and social well-being, and so forth are circumstances to cultivate within the patient. Work on their horror for the familiar. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, and so change must be made with some regularity. Not for change as a pleasurable experience but as a continuity of novelty and demand for gratification. The point is to reduce healthy pleasure for ever-increasing desire with a growing outcome toward avarice (extreme greed for wealth or material gain). The nonsense of the intellect can further corrupt the will on the incessant path of modernity. So, get the patient to ask if faithful interests, Christian practices, and devotion are in step with the progressive trajectory of social and civil order. This philosophy or pattern of thought renders people susceptible to distraction where their wills are bent toward what the father below prescribes.
Erratum 26:
Perpetual self-sacrifice in the form of self-righteous generosity can lead to an inability to seek the needs of others through proper outreach, charity, and love. Watch for opportunities to breed hidden resentment or subtle conflict between the patient, his young woman, and related families.
Erratum 27:
Encourage the patient to reject prayers for help about a wandering mind or distractions as he has become more attuned to temporal happiness now that he has a love for a young woman. As concerns spill over into other areas that work against his more immediate happiness, interject thoughts with intellectual difficulties that lead to flawed rationale about his state of mind during prayer. Through this, you aim to persuade him that petitionary prayers are ineffective. As the patient becomes more familiar with the current state of thinking among scholars and spiritual leaders concerning the historical writings of ancient authors, guide him toward those who assert that history, which comports with Truth and the Enemy’s work throughout Creation, is false.
Erratum 28:
You’re to keep the patient alive as long as you can during his course of life. He would not be consigned to Hell if he were to die today because he has surrendered himself to the Enemy. He has remained close to the Enemy and seeks to obey Him at every turn. The longer the patient is alive after he has given himself to the Enemy, the more hope there is to win him to the father below. If he is permitted to live and remain protected while he settles into earthly living, he might become more susceptible to compromise during attacks until his final demise.
Erratum 29:
Muddle the patient’s virtues. Evaluate the best target for the most favorable outcomes against the patient. Some existing virtue is necessary to develop and magnify a man’s wickedness. Using people with virtues to betray one’s own is a deception and a trade worth making. It is necessary to recognize virtue and what it is or does in order to see it in others and betray it. Even if temporarily by confusion.
Erratum 30:
The continued erosion of virtue while the patient is tired, exhausted, or afraid is of significant interest. Because when he is attacked under these conditions, what is spiritually real can become questionable. Where doubt sets in, different choices can be made with devastating consequences. Blinding people to the existence of virtues or their absence can render individuals aware or oblivious to lapses in moral values and behaviors. With increased fear, there is the potential for anger and anxiety.
Erratum 31:
[ Screwtape is displeased with Wormwood as the patient had escaped their grasp just as he passed away. The patient’s soul has slipped through their temptations despite their machinations. Screwtape is extraordinarily angered by Wormwood getting outmaneuvered. And Screwtape lamented what was revealed to the patient upon death. The patient’s explicit knowledge of sin and what Wormwood and his associates had done faded into shadow as salvation was finally attained. All the temptations and attacks of Wormwood were future in the end. The patient would encounter pain, suffering, and trial no more. As Screwtape was assured and obnoxious about Wormwood’s failures at tempting the patient to drag him to Hell, he sank into further misery and angst about the rejection of their work.
As Screwtape signed off on each letter, he wrote, “Your affectionate Uncle SCREWTAPE,” but this time, he made sure that Wormwood would have to settle with him about the loss. Screwtape’s final signoff was especially ominous. ]
SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST
These were diabolical letters. An exercise in twisting the mind. A projection into a dark view of humanity and its depravity. The use of diabolical ventriloquism was a look at what spiritual temptation looks like with provocateurs of evil origin. As the errata closed, the author returns later with the Screwtape figure as an honored guest in Hell who proposed a toast to his contemporaries within an esteemed academic institution. His gesture of celebration and appeal to mutual congratulation for the work of seasoned professional tempters and newcomers was a scene of vile contempt with reason and wicked persuasion. Screwtape drew attention at his college address to the individual, cliques, modern society, and evil systems of government who were quite capable of putting themselves squarely in Hell without any aid of devils, demons, or other evil influences. All those in attendance in Hell were given a discourse on precisely how lost, socially misled, and self-corrupted people are perfectly capable of doing the work of Hell’s appointed occupants.
