THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS
Friday, June 16, 2023 by Linda Wood Rondeau

Categories: Friday's Fiction

FICTION FRIDAY

THE CLASSICS REVISITED

LINDA WOOD RONDEAU

ABOUT THE BOOK

I first read The Screwtape Letters while in high school and was captivated by both the writing and Lewis’s insight into how the devil works on us. It is perhaps my favorite book of all time. What a pleasure to read it again!

The version I read was in The C.S. Lewis Collection: Novels and Short Stories, one I borrowed via my Kindle from the Hoopla lending library.

Written as satire, the book contains many theological issues, mostly about temptation and the devil’s strategies to undermine an effective Christian walk.

Screwtape is a supervisory demon. His letters are addressed to a nephew, Wormwood who is assigned a human to prevent from becoming a Christian. We see Wormwood as incompetent since “The Patient” has become a Christian.

The book was first published in 1942, though versions of the letters appeared in 1941 in the weekly Anglican periodical The Guardian. A sequel, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” was published in 1959.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica online)

Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland, and died on November 22, 1963, in Oxfordshire, England. His work of greatest fame was The Chronicles of Narnia, though The Screwtape Letters is still popular and has been adapted to screen and stage numerous times.

Lewis’s father was a solicitor. His mother graduated from the Royal University of Ireland in Belfast. Both Lewis and his older brother were encouraged to study. Lewis was a prodigy, able to read by the age of three, and at age five began writing stories, some influenced by Beatrix Potter.

Lewis was home-schooled for much of his early years while his brother Warren attended English boarding schools. Lewis entered Malvern College with the help of a mentor but was unhappy there. He left and later entered the University of Oxford via a scholarship to study the classics.

During World War I, Lewis served with the Somerset Light Infantry. He continued his studies at Oxford and became a fellow and tutor in 1925, retiring from that position in 1954. He then became a professor of medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge, retiring in 1963, a few months before his death.

Initially, Lewis wanted to be a poet. However, a disappointing publication under the name Clive Hamilton prompted him to move his literary efforts toward prose and later fiction. Lewis moved from atheism to Christianity in 1931 through the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien.

In his later life, he married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American, who became a Christian as a result of Lewis’s writing. They established a friendship while she was still married to Gresham but living in England. After their divorce, she secretly married Lewis in 1956 to allow her to remain in England. In 1957 Joy was diagnosed with advanced cancer. Her cancer did, by what Lewis deemed a miracle, go into remission, allowing the couple to enjoy a few years together until the cancer returned. She died in 1960. Lewis wrote his book A Grief Observed in 1961, fictionalized by the movie, Shadowlands, starring Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins.

Lewis died in 1963, from kidney failure. If the date sounds familiar, it was the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT C.S. LEWIS

In 2013, Lewis was honored with a memorial in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

In the Comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, Mrs. Wormood, Calvin’s elementary school teacher, was named after Lewis’s character.

The documentary, Affectionately Yours, Screwtape: The Devil and C.S. Lewis aired on the History Channel in 2007.

SOME UNFORGETTABLE QUOTES FROM THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS:

Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.

WHAT READERS CAN LEARN

Lewis’s comprehension of Satan’s tricks and determination to upset the Christian’s walk is deep and enlightening. His views on the Lord’s ability to circumvent those tricks are comforting.

WHAT WRITERS CAN LEARN

Lewis is a master storyteller. I particularly enjoyed his use of satire to bring home spiritual truth.

Share This Blog: