| The Screwtape Letters | |
|---|---|
 Recent edition cover | |
| Author | C. S. Lewis |
| Country | Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Christian satire |
| Publisher | Geoffrey Bles |
| Publication date | 1942 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 175 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0-06-065293-7 |
The Screwtape Letters is a Christian apologetics novel written in epistolary style by C. S. Lewis, first published in book form in 1942. The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood, so as to advise him on methods of securing the damnation of a British man, known only as "the Patient".
Screwtape (along with his trusted scribe Toadpipe) holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy ("Lowerarchy") of Hell, and acts more as a mentor than a supervisor to Wormwood, the inexperienced tempter; almost every letter ends with the signature, "Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape". In the body of the thirty-one letters which make up the book, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin in his Patient, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine.
The Screwtape Letters was dedicated by C.S. Lewis to his friend J. R. R. Tolkien.
In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis provides a series of lessons in the importance of taking a deliberate role in living out Christian faith by portraying a typical human life, with all its temptations and failings, as seen from the demon/devil's viewpoint. Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiarly morally reversed world, where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither demon is capable of comprehending or acknowledging true human virtue when he sees it.
Versions of the letters were originally published in The Guardian, and the standard edition contains an introduction explaining how the author chose to write his story.
While The Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis' most popular works, Lewis claimed that the book was "not fun" to write, and he "resolved never to write another 'Letter'." (See his Preface to Screwtape Proposes a Toast.) However, in 1959 he wrote an sequel to it, Screwtape Proposes a Toast.
The Screwtape Letters, along with Screwtape Proposes a Toast, has also been released on both audio cassette and CD narrated by John Cleese of Monty Python and Joss Ackland.
Contents[hide] |
Plot overview
The Screwtape Letters comprises thirty-one letters written by a senior demon named Screwtape to his nephew, a young demon named Wormwood. Screwtape's letters contain advice for how to turn Wormwood's "Patient", an ordinary man living in war-time England, toward "Our Father Below" (Devil / Satan) and away from "the Enemy" (God).
After the first letter, the Patient converts to Christianity, and Wormwood is given a severe rebuking and threatened with the "usual penalties" at the House of Correction for Incompetent Tempters. A striking contrast is formed between Wormwood and Screwtape during the rest of the book. Wormwood is depicted through Screwtape's letters as much closer to what conventional wisdom has said about demons, i.e., wanting to tempt his patient into extravagantly wicked and deplorable sins and constantly writing about the war that is going on for the latter half of the book. Screwtape, on the other hand, is not interested in getting the patient to commit anything spectacularly evil, saying that "the safest path to hell is the gradual one." He sees a demon's primary goal to befuddle and confuse, rather than tempt.
Lewis's use of this "correspondence" is both varied and hard-hitting. With his own views on theology, Lewis covers areas as diverse as sex, love, pride, gluttony, and war. Lewis, an Oxford scholar himself, suggests in his work that even intellectuals are not impervious to the influence of such demons, especially in regards to being led towards placated acceptance of the "Historical Point of View."
In the last letter, it emerges that the Patient has been killed during an air raid (World War II having broken out between the fourth and fifth letters), and has gone to Heaven. Wormwood is punished for letting a soul 'slip through his fingers' by being handed over to the fate that would have awaited his patient had he been successful: the consumption of his spiritual essence by the other demons. Screwtape responds to his nephew's desperate final letter by assuring him that he may expect just as much assistance from his "increasingly and ravenously affectionate" uncle as Screwtape would expect from Wormwood were their situations reversed, paralleling a situation where Wormwood himself turned his uncle over to Satan for making a religiously positive remark that would offend him.
Screwtape Proposes a Toast
The short sequel essay Screwtape Proposes a Toast, first published in 1959, is an addendum to The Screwtape Letters. It takes the form not of a letter but rather an after-dinner speech given by Screwtape at the Tempters' Training College for young demons. It first appeared as an article in the Saturday Evening Post.
Screwtape Proposes a Toast is Lewis's criticism of levelling and featherbedding trends in public education; more specifically, as he reveals in the foreword to the American edition, public education in America (though in the text, it is English education that is held up as the purportedly awful example).
The Cold War opposition between the West and the Communist World is explicitly discussed as a backdrop to the educational issues. Screwtape and other demons are portrayed as consciously using the subversion of education and intellectual thought in the West to bring about its overthrow by the communist enemy from without and within. In this sense Screwtape Proposes a Toast is more strongly political than The Screwtape Letters where no strong stand is made on political issues of the day, i.e., World War II.
Comic book adaptation
Marvel Comics and religious book publisher Thomas Nelson produced a comic book adaptation of The Screwtape Letters in 1994.[1]
Film adaptation
On Wednesday, January 31, 2006 it was announced that Walden Media had bought the rights to turn the book into a feature film. Walden Media is the same company that previously developed Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series. Ralph Winter (X-Men, Fantastic Four) and Douglas Gresham (Lewis' stepson) will co-produce. "With the right script," Winter said, "dealing with temptation and that whole upside down world, it could be a very, very interesting movie. And it's going to be dark. This isn't a light, happy, Narnia piece."
Stage adaptation
The Fellowship for the Performing Arts obtained from the Lewis estate the rights to adapt The Screwtape Letters for the stage. The initial production opened off-off-Broadway at Theatre 315 in New York City in January 2006. The initial three-week run was extended to eleven sold-out weeks by popular demand, and closed only because the theater was contractually obligated to another production.[2] It was co-written by Max McLean (who also starred) and Jeffrey Fiske (who also directed). A second, expanded production opened off Broadway at the Theatre at St. Clements on 18 October 2007, originally scheduled to run through at least January 6, 2008; the production re-opened at the Mercury Theater in Chicago in September 2008, and is currently on a national tour until January 2010.
Audio drama
Focus on the Family Radio Theatre, which received a Peabody Award and multiple Audie awards for excellence in broadcasting and production, was granted the rights to dramatize "The Screwtape Letters" as a feature length audio drama. Production began in 2008 and a fall 2009 release has been announced.[3] It has also been announced that Andy Serkis, known for playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, will be providing the voice for Screwtape. There is a 7-and-a-half minute video preview of the Radio Theatre production with interviews and making-of footage.[4]
Cultural references
The book itself may be considered to be a cultural reference to Mark Twain´s work Letters from the Earth, like The Great Divorce is to William Blake´s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.[citation needed]
Randy Alcorn wrote a similar book, Lord Foulgrin's Letters. Some demons' letters are found by a human and the demons are punished by Beelzebub for their incompetence in losing them. Alcorn has also written a sequel, The Ishbane Conspiracy.
The author Peter Kreeft wrote a book "in the style of" The Screwtape Letters called The Snakebite Letters.
In his series of very short stories, The Periodic Table of Science Fiction, science fiction author Michael Swanwick wrote the story titled Dysprosium in the style of a new, recent letter from Screwtape to Wormwood. In this story, "dysprosium" is described as an "element of confusion and miscommunication in language", something which has been a great success story for the Infernal Establishment.
The song Oubliette (Disappear) by The Receiving End of Sirens, is based on an excerpt from "The Screwtape Letters"[5]
Screwtape appears in the story "The Ministry of Lies"[6] from the collection "Fire from Heaven and Other Stories" by Philip Marshall.[7]
The song "My Dear Wormwood" from the album "As The World" by Echolyn, is directly inspired by the book.
Cartoonist Bill Watterson revealed in Calvin and Hobbes: The Tenth Anniversary Book that the character of Mrs. Wormwood, Calvin's teacher, was named for the character in The Screwtape Letters.
Elder Neal A. Maxwell of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wrote a book titled "The Enoch Letters" following this same format, but set as letters from friends into and out of the translated city of Enoch.
In the music video for "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me", Bono is shown reading The Screwtape Letters while walking down a street.
Bibliography
- Lewis, C. S. (2001), The Screwtape Letters, with Screwtape Proposes a Toast, HarperSanFrancisco, ISBN 0-06-065293-4
References
- ^ Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. The Christian classic series. New York: Marvel Comics, 1994. ISBN 978-0840762610
- ^ "About the NYC Production of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters". http://www.fpatheatre.com/current/. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
- ^ http://www.radiotheatre.org
- ^ Video preview of audiotape
- ^ http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858677260/
- ^ "The Ministry of Lies"
- ^ ISBN 0-473-06590-8
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