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Failure In C. S. Lewis 'The Screwtape Letters'

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“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn”
-Luther

This quote is the backbone of C.S. Lewis' epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters, which chronicles the letters of Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his demon nephew Wormwood, on how to best tempt a human toward unhappiness and moral failure. The story is written from a Christian perspective, but the topics addressed are largely drawn from real aspects of human nature, thus their validity is not demeaned by this presentation; rather The Screwtape Letters provides an accurate testimony on the subject from a universal point of view. Covering a broad spectrum of topics, The Screwtape Letters employs upside down, infernal logic as Screwtape's young nephew Wormwood fails or succeeds in corrupting certain areas of his “patient's” life after Screwtape advises him on how to push an advantage or withdraw from a failed area. Though Wormwood receives a myriad of lessons on the exploitable weaknesses of human nature, he ultimately …show more content…

The very first suggestion he makes is that Wormwood prevent his patient from trying to disbelieve in the “Enemy” (God) through logical argumentation, stating that “it moves the whole struggle on to the Enemy's own ground” (Lewis, 2). Screwtape continues by asserting that the patient should justify believing in a philosophy not because it it true, but rather because it is “strong, or stark, or courageous” (Lewis, 2). While the first piece of advice is ironically debatable by non-Christians, the second one is more evident in our society today. Many people make their own feelings and desires paramount, and choose a philosophy that makes them comfortable, molding truth around themselves. Even being strong, stark, or courageous is no longer important, only being

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C.S. Lewis, a Christian writer from England, penned a manuscript in 1942 called The Screwtape Letters that examined the temptations presented to man by Satan. “Lewis's Screwtape Letters was certainly one of his most popular works, and by his own admission it was a work that he found easy to write” (Harwood 24). By being a Christian himself, Lewis could sympathize and identify with fellow Christians undergoing the onslaught of spiritual attacks. Christians struggle daily with the temptations of Satan similar to those that Screwtape directs his nephew, Wormwood, to employ towards the Patient. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis uses the character, Patient, to symbolize everyman and his struggles with overcoming temptations by showing how Screwtape attempts to conjure a plan for Wormwood to lure the Patient to the Devil’s camp with Satan’s insipid temptations of vanity,

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