the screwtape letters includes screwtape proposes a toast

Screwtape is a senior devil in Hell, and this essay is his speech delivered at a dinner in honor of the recent graduates of Hell’s Tempter College. It is a thought-provoking essay, written some 18 years after The Screwtape Letters were composed, and I felt that it deserved its own podcast. I felt it covered some of the same ground as The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength but in a stronger way.This podcast covers the essay “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” which is found as an appendix to the current edition of “The Screwtape Letters”. The Screwtape Letters is a new favorite of mine.

Finally, the character of the off-screen Christian was beautifully painted, even though we could only get to know him through the unsavory narrator. Apart from illuminating issues in the wider world, I also felt he brought up one or two “logs in my own eye” which was unexpected and effective. What Lewis is doing here is opening the reader’s eyes to threats and diversions encountered in a Christian’s life, some of them so subtle because they are masked under a more “administrative” or contemporary terror. However, the point of this book is not to shock the reader (not even to the extent of my favorite of Lewis’s novels, Till We Have Faces). Truly, some humans I’ve interacted with speak more detestably than Screwtape. I was amazed how Lewis managed to write a dark humorous satire without making me feel icky about it. Think of it as a Pilgrim’s Progress, except from the antagonist’s perspective.

Wormwood’s assignment is to try to malignly influence a certain young Christian man, who remains unnamed, as the Christian journeys through young love and the horrors of the Second World War. Our narrator is Uncle Screwtape, an old and “wise” devil who is writing to his nephew Wormwood, who is a devil in training. Lewis’s approach to writing-plus the praise I’ve heard about this book from different friends (most recently Stephen’s review)-I was inspired to go for it, at long last.

I had something of this thought when I settled down to read The Screwtape Letters over Christmas Eve & Day.

Letters written by a devil for a devil? Odd reading for Christmas, wouldn’t ya say?

The screwtape letters includes screwtape proposes a toast