The Screwtape Letters

The young man has fallen in love, and Screwtape is furious. The object of the patient’s affections is a good girl: “Not only a Christian but such a Christian—a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss. The little brute. She makes me want to vomit” (117).

Screwtape is so overwrought that he changes form into a “large centipede” and has to dictate the end of this letter to his secretary.

Screwtape is back with a new agenda. Since the young man is connected to “intelligent” Christians through his beloved, Wormwood must now work to “corrupt” the patient’s spirituality.  He suggests having the patient focus on a conceptual approach to his beliefs that keeps him at a distance from genuine faith: “we do want, want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice” (26).

Screwtape comes up with an approach to use the young man’s girlfriend to the devils’ advantage. She is so Christian that she considers those who do not share her belief as “too stupid and ridiculous.