Book Review: The Screwtape Letters

Source: Amazon.com

The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis

From the book's cover: The Screwtape Letters by C.S.  Lewis is a classic masterpiece of religious satire that entertains readers with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation—and triumph over it—ever written.

The review: This will not be a term paper.  I say that up front as both an assurance to the casual reader, a warning to those of a scholarly bent who might dispute my own observations, and as a reminder to myself to not go overboard in my analysis.  After all, I am not a true literary scholar.  And this is a review.  All I intend by my words is a commendation on the merits of reading the book, and why I see it that way.  I am aware that my views are simplistic in some ways, and so for those of you who could argue the merits of this or that or the other up and down and sideways in a literary classic like The Screwtape Letters, I yield the floor.  But if you wanted to know my own thoughts, read on and be damned... or saved, depending on your own take on the book.

I realize in this modern world that many people can look at The Screwtape Letters as a bit of an anachronism.  After all, it was written during World War II, and so many see that as being a LONG time ago.  But more to the point, the subject of The Screwtape Letters is Christian apologetism, albeit in a backward format.  For those who may not be in the know, The Screwtape Letters is a series of fictional (or are they?) correspondences between a retired tempter fiend by the name of Screwtape, to his nephew and Junior Tempter, Wormwood.  The letters are all from Screwtape's point of view, and follow the former's efforts to instruct - and at times deliver sideways belittlement for perceived
ineptitude of - the latter.

The author, C.S. Lewis. / Source: narniaweb.com

C.S. Lewis is an author who is famous for using the Christian motif in his writings, and so Screwtape Letters is no oddity on that score.  I have only read of his works, so far as I recall, the Narnia series.  But that in itself is steeped in Christian symbology and convention, though it be almost in parable form.  I suppose it could be said that this makes Lewis an excellent candidate to write a book like this, which is so thoroughly entrenched in the subject of Christianity. 

Lewis takes the slant of using old Tempter Screwtape as a foil to point out many of the strengths and weaknesses inbuilt in the daily life of someone who proposes to be a Christian.  Through satire, Lewis spurns the reader to find his or her own weaknesses, and to also recognize the weaknesses of society around him.  On this track, Lewis lampoons many beliefs that may have been fashionable during the period in which he was writing, and which in many cases are still just as viable, if not even more so, today.

One artist's impression  (Luke Forwoodson) of Screwtape.  Not half bad. / Source: juxtapoz.com

I pause here to point out that, no, I am no expert on the subject.  And so I readily admit to feeling myself on shaky turf here.  It's not that I don't understand the tenets of basic Christianity, as I am of a Christian background.  However, I am no Christian scholar.  I am like so many in this world, who simply believe what I believe and try to live as good a life as I can.  And fail at it more often than I should.  As I read the book, I'd see myself in Screwtape's words from time to time.   Please don't misunderstand, gentle reader;  that had acute emotional impact upon me while reading.  Those emotional reactions surely colored my response to the book.  So what follows will reflect that.  You've been warned.

Saying that, I will proceed to point out some specific instances that impressed me while reading.  I found Lewis's subtle skill at enunciating so many common ills of mankind to be masterful.  For instance, in one section, his demonic narrator points out that mankind suffers from a tragic belief in their own possession of things that they may lay claim on, chief of which may be their time.  He alludes to a man's peevishness when his time is intruded upon.  Anyone who knows me might well know that this had some affect on me.  I tend to think of things as being "mine."  And I am bitterly possessive of my time.  I often feel, when put upon to do chores or tasks that I had not foreseen, as
though I am being robbed of "my" time.  So this stung a bit to be reminded of, I assure you.  Lewis points out, via that Tempter extraordinaire, that mankind does not own anything, least of which their time.  All we are given, if you believe in the tenets of Christianity enough to truly practice, is our free will.  That was given us of God to do with as we see fit.  He asks that we use it to His glory, and therefore raise ourselves to a higher level when we sacrifice what we have.  Lewis, through Screwtape's diabolical eloquence, points out that a human being is never so close to the Divine as when he is putting off the natural existence and being true to what he or she believes.

Another take on Screwtape.  While the image is from what I assume is a play version of the book, the idea of a harried bureaucrat in the role of tempter seems fairly eloquent to me, just the same, for some reason. / Source: lehighvalleylive.com

I found another section particularly poignant.  In my own religious belief, we are sometimes exhorted to not pray in a hollow manner, but to pour out our souls in supplication.  This can be traced to Christ's teachings, of course.  He certainly made a point or two about Pharisees and "big" prayers that basically go to the people, and not to God.  Screwtape, in his writings, mentions that Wormwood should put great emphasis on making sure that people pray, not so much with sincerity on the thing they desire, but for relief from the present discomfort.  I recently found myself praying for rain.  I wasn't praying for any reason other than that bad weather would make customers at one of my two jobs less inclined to come in, and thus give me more reason to labor.  They'd be more likely to stay  home.  To me, this seems like a win-win.  But when viewed in a clear light, I am doing exactly what old Screwtape told his nephew to tempt souls to do.  No praying with honest intent, but more as though I am trying to wheedle God into saving me from some hard work.  A true Christian should not pray in such a way.  Though I suppose it might be countered that at least I was praying at all.  Still...  prayer from relief from suffering is not as good as prayer for what we truly need.  And work is often something we need, whether we like it or not.

As this review goes further and further along, I find myself wanting to ask forgiveness of the reader for my highly personalized take on the book.  It's one sided, I know.  However, I think that Lewis, though he doesn't follow the exact same creed of Christianity that I subscribe to, had some things as right about man's relationship with God as anyone I have read in recent memory.  Certainly anyone writing from a secular standpoint.  I found much of value in the backwards analogies the book is stuffed with.  For instance, Screwtape says (paraphrased), "Make sure to keep your 'patient' focused on the future and the worries thereof."  How often do I myself "borrow trouble," as my good wife says it.  Finding myself worrying pointlessly about something I can't do anything about at the moment, and making myself and others miserable for it.

Homer Simpson and the eternal debate.  Do you listen to the guy with the halo, or the guy with the pitchfork?  Halo...  Hhmmm... Halo.  Or halos are like donuts.  Hmmm... donuts...  / Source: merecslewis.blogspot.com

Another point in its favor: The Screwtape Letters abounds in humor.  Here I must interject and say that the witticisms Lewis peppers the book with, via that oh-so articulate and yet oh-so deliciously dire Screwtape, were enhanced almost immeasurably by the narrator that I listened to (via audiobook).  I had read The Screwtape Letters before when I was younger, and enjoyed them, but not nearly so much as I did when Screwtape's discourse was voiced by that master of the droll, John Cleese.  The man's delivery was perfect for relating the deep irony, subsurface malice, hypocrisy, seductive logic, and out-right frustration that are Screwtape's epistlatory domain. 

For instance, when Screwtape loses his temper with Wormwood and begins berating him for allowing his "patient" to meet and fall in love with an excellent example of a true Christian woman, and then explodes into such wrath and vengefulness that he has to have his correspondence dictated to his secretary, as he has transformed into  a giant centipede while out of control.  Not only is the author's delightful sense of humor used to its fullest, but Cleese's verbalization is impeccable.

Though the caption from the image mentioned this is Screwtape as a spider, it looks more to me like the scene mentioned above, in which Screwtape loses all sense of decorum and, in his wrath, morphs into a giant centipede. / Source: apilgriminnarnia.com

I suppose I could go on and on, pointing out the virtues of the book.  But I will shy away from that and look at some things that I found interesting and could even disagree with.  And then, gentle reader, I will summarize and be done. The Screwtape Letters, in and of itself, was excellent.  However, after it concluded, there was the brief followup, entitled Screwtape Proposes a Toast.  This was written, according to Wikipedia.org, for the Saturday Evening Post and published in 1959.  This piece describes some of what I assume are Lewis's apprehensions at state school systems
(particularly those of England at the time), as well as the nature of democracy.  While I found the material fascinating, and even still relevant today, I must say that I don't completely agree with the entire sentiment presented.  Or more perhaps, I should say, I don't agree with the particular emphasis.

Let me give a touch of background to lead you into this.  Screwtape, an honored ("dishonored" would be his turn-of-phrase) guest who is proposing a toast at the Tempters college graduation banquet, goes to great lengths to point out that the meal of souls the fiends are about to partake in are rather bland in the whole.  He then says that sin is becoming both banal and yet so widespread as to be more prevalent than ever before.  This of course, I can see the point in. 

The cover art from Screwtape Proposes a Toast.  You know, you can almost get a sense of C.S. Lewis himself in the image provided.  If he was a bit younger and a bit... redder. / Source: ponderingprinciples.com

However, Lewis, through Screwtape, then goes into a diatribe on the merits of democracy, and especially so when it applies to education.  The gist is, when we use the phrase "all men are equal," we are putting all men at the same level.  This has the attendant function of bringing those who are either incapable or unwilling to excel upward to a level unjustified by merit, and for dropping all those who can rise higher to a level of common mediocrity. 

This I can agree with, in principle.  I can point out, in my own personal experience, to the No Child Left Behind law bequeathed the U.S. school system by George W. Bush's administration.  This law is a clunky use of "all men (children, in this case) are equal," and I am not the only person I know who feels similarly.  However, the way Lewis berates the term of "democracy" I think can be misleading, and so I take a bit of exception to it.  "Democracy," employed in a negative manner, can be put to horrible excesses.  The point Screwtape brings up, regarding a quote from Aristotle that democracy (and I'm paraphrasing here, as I couldn't find the exact quote in my admittedly quick Internet search) should be interested in doing what is best for mankind, but instead may often be doing what is best for sustaining democracy itself.  Governments are in the business of sustaining themselves as governments, and the like.

As a near contemporary of Lewis, Roosevelt made a fairly clear distinction on how democracy and education should work together. / Source: paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com

However, it is my simple, benighted opinion that the real phrase that should be used and relied upon is the one the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Constitution adopted.  That "All Men Are Created Equal."  Even this is not precise, as anyone who looks with a critical eye on the length and breadth of humanity will see that humans are almost universally never created equally.  The great gulf between developed and undeveloped nations may attest to that.  Humans are lucky if born into a happy circumstance, and more likely to struggle if born low.  But the fact remains, a person, born of the womb, is equal in form and function, excluding deformity and disagreeable genetic/biologic inheritance, of which no person can overcome on their own.  We all hypothetically start at the same or near the same footing.  This is the ideal that "All Men Are Created Equal" tries to establish.

If we live in such a way as to use that precept to remember that we all started off, biologically, as babes with nothing to merit other than - hopefully - the love of at least the mother who bore us, and went to the doors of death to bring us into the world, then we have no right to look down our noses on any other man for what he is.  What he may have done with himself is another matter, and this is where I agree with Lewis on the danger of the term "democracy."  But until we live in a perfect world, we should be willing to set aside our natural competitiveness to some degree so that all men may have as good a chance for justice and fairness as we can accommodate.  And that's a dream anyway, as anyone who knows the world knows that it almost never happens that way.  But if we give up the credo, then we are no better than any tyrant-led society of thugs, and deserve no better than they, in the end.

Roosevelt's words regarding democracy are all fine, mind you.  But since we're playing devil's advocate here...  / Source: southernnationalist.com

I've run on long enough and probably turned this more into a term paper than I had intended.  The price you pay, I suppose.  In a nutshell, The Screwtape Letters was a short but very positive read for me.  I enjoyed it, and though I would not recommend it as a text from which to choose a particular religious affiliation - Lewis was working from what he knew in the time he lived, and I myself am of a different faith than he - I would wholeheartedly recommend The Screwtape Letters for its commentary on politics and human vice (wait, aren't those the same thing?).  Screwtape is a gem for its skill in pointing out how subtle is the tendency of humanity to do those things which we would loudly profess to stand against.  And its just a great read too, to boot.

Learn more about The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, on Amazon.com


The parting comment:


I think old Screwtape mentioned the sin of gluttony once or twice.  But do donuts really count?

A two-for-one on parting thoughts today.


I saw this skit as a teenager on late night TV.  Can't recall now what show I was watching.  But it was Saturday night (Maybe SNL, but I didn't watch that much as I didn't "get" much of their humor as a teenager, for some reason).  I used to watch the regular network TV-edited version of Tales From The Crypt on Fox Saturday nights back then, and then lay there, half awake, through whatever was on after that.  Until finally falling asleep sometime around midnight or sometimes 1 AM.  I miss that sometimes.  Then again, late night TV where I live stopped being interesting around 2002.  Before then, they only showed stuff on late night TV that parents wouldn't be cool with their kids seeing at earlier "prime time" hours.  Nowadays, they show everything anyway.  So why care what time of day you're showing it?