He happily reports this to his uncle and he is promptly rewarded with an impatient scolding from Screwtape. Screwtape reasons that because whether The Patient becomes an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist, any form of extreme inclination will result in sin-save for the extremism for God-which always results in virtue.Įxposed to the threat of constant danger, seeing the bleakness of the wartime situation, and through Wormwood’s subtle prodding The Patient experiences a crisis of faith or “ losing his religion” in his own words. In response to this Screwtape expertly recommends that Wormwood push The Patient to extremism, either direction will do. This reckoning with mortality in turn causes them to carefully evaluate what truly matters most to them, which causes them to act morally or worse yet, at least for their demonic cause, prompts people to genuinely seek out God and embrace Christianity. Ironically, he also writes about bravery and virtue as a “warning” to Wormwood because war also causes people to confront the inevitability of their mortality. He sends Wormwood a series of detailed messages on producing fear from the cruelty that can be produced from war. Screwtape is quick to capitalize on the situation, knowing that war often brings about extreme reactions in humanity. The Screwtape Letters was written during World War II, the horror of war serving as both a backdrop and as a plot driver. as these would discourage The Patient and keep him too distracted from thinking about and accepting Christianity. He strongly advocates that Wormwood unsure that The Patient abandon reason-all reason-through any number of means: “busy-ness”, being excessively critical of peers, the Church, Christianity, and family, the idle pursuit of creature comforts, convenience, etc. Screwtape heavily emphasizes in early chapters, or his early letters rather, that the best, most efficient way to fully corrupt the human soul is to do this as subtly as possible. The unfortunate soul in question is referred to in the novel simply as The Patient and remains unnamed throughout the story. These letters were written for the express purpose of instructing the young demon on the finer points of how to corrupt the human soul.

The novel is a collection of 31 correspondences composed by the eponymous Screwtape for his nephew and protégé, a younger demon named Wormwood.

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The screwtape