by Joshua Ortiz

Created on: December 07, 2008

C.S. Lewis once wrote "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them." Throughout history mankind has struggled, relentlessly, to put this concept into perspective. Lewis, a well respected Christian author, thought it appropriate to develop a work that would help individuals "grasp the notion of devils." "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis is a powerful satire that develops situational and dramatic irony by allowing the reader to experience various thought patterns of the devil.

Clive Staples Lewis has become known as one of contemporary society's most distinguished Christian authors. Throughout his career, Lewis emphasized a continuing Christian experience in almost all of his major writing, despite an early intolerance for the Church because of its institutionalized nature. Ironically, the idea for this novel came about at Holy Trinity Church near Headington Quarry. Actually, to be more politically correct, the letters were conceived shortly after listening to a radio broadcast by Adolph Hitler the night before. At this time Lewis remarked, "Statements which I know to be untrue all but convince me, at any rate for the moment, if only the man says them unflinchingly." These events, along with written narratives, were printed in several corresponding letters to his brother, Warnie Lewis. The narratives would later be published as "The Screwtape Letters" in 1942.

In response to a particularly feebleminded reader, Lewis explained that his purpose in writing the novel was "not to speculate about diabolical life, but to throw light from a new angle on the life of men." His objective was to write a book that highlighted man's willingness to conform to the natures of evil. This was accomplished by establishing Hell as a bureaucracy because as Lewis put it, "evil is not conceived in concentration camps; it is the final result of quiet words spoken by well-dressed men in carpeted offices." "The Screwtape Letters" focuses on the communication between two devils, Screwtape and Wormwood. Screwtape is a senior devil that writes to the inexperienced Wormwood and gives him advice on how to condemn the "patient" to Hell. In this case the patient is a young man that struggles with his faith during the onset of World War II.

Lewis' main goal in writing the letters was to bring bout a change in human thinking as it

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