The Screwtape Letters / Screwtape Proposes a Toast

Sometimes I hold off on reviewing "classics" because everyone tells me how danged "classic" they are and I tend to not trust things that are "popular." So, the long wait (my whole life) before I finally read C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters and the appended "Screwtape Proposes a Toast."

Wow! It is good. It is, despite some dated references in a dated setting, still relevant to present-day mankind and their souls. The story is so well-known, and so easily findable on Wikipedia and the like, that I won't give any sort of recap. A million other reviewers have praised this work's virtues, so I will just say that Lewis's take on how and why mankind could be tempted to hellfire is brilliant.

As I said, still relevant too. I will give a few show more examples of Lewis's prescient warnings and insights. In "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" he derides the educational system.

"At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit from higher education or not. At schools, children who are too stupid of lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling." (pp. 125-126)

How familiar does that sound? The dumbing down of our educational system? The rampant student loan debt because everybody MUST go to college!

Or on the pitfalls of democracy. Democracy as in everyone is equal, which is how the demons want to define it. "..they [the humans] should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning." Why? Teach man that instead of all men being created equal, and how every man is equal before the law, the government, and God, no, falsely teach man that "all men are equal" (p. 122, emphasis in the original). Why? "As a result you can use the word democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of all human feelings. You can get him to practise, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided." (p. 122).

Does that not sound like the decline of Western thought and values in a nutshell? "We are all equal! All the same! Democracy! So do what everyone else is doing!" Or, to give it a socialist tinge, which is what Lewis mainly meant I think. You would not steal another man's property as a burglar, but call it a tax to pull down the rich so all men are at the same level! Democracy!

A classic, and rightly so. Highly recommended.

Reviewed ISBN 0684831171. Two prefaces by the author included. show less

This book is not what I was expecting. A funny satire, it is not. Instead, I found myself reading some of the most revolting, selfish, disgusting opinions I've ever had the misfortune to deal with.

If this is Lewis' christianity, the tenets of his religion consist of such charming little bits like:
1. Love in relationships doesn't matter, just making kids
2. Caring about suffering in general is a waste of time, you should only care about people you know personally
3. The "european war" has no moral considerations at all and is a distraction from things of higher spiritual importance, stop thinking about it
4. Furthermore, there is no difference between a pacifist and a nationalistic warmonger, both stances are equally irrelevant to spiritual show more matters
5. Materialism or things such as scientific advancement or knowledge don't assist your immortal soul and may be a devilish distraction, actively avoid such topics of thought
6. 'Liberal, compassionate jesus' is an invalid construction, just as invalid a construction as 'fashionably communist jesus', stop trying to assign goodwill to him because it exists only in your own mind.

Just like all other religious apologia, this has nothing useful to say if you haven't already fully guzzled the flavoraid of the religion yourself. I've lost interest in hearing anything Lewis has to say. I find his morals repulsive and his worldview regressive. The man is an anti-humanist - if everybody did things the way he thinks you should, the world would be a worse place, with more human suffering in it.

I rarely DNF books, normally I can power through to the end. I powered through the Illuminatus trilogy to the end, and that was a feat. This one, I'm done. show less

In a series of letters written from one demon, Screwtape, to his nephew and trainee demon, Wormwood, Lewis exposes the nature of temptation and how easy it is to rationalize sin. It didn’t take me long to realize that Lewis had “stopped preaching and started to meddling”. I didn’t like what I saw reflected in my own life. Lewis died before I was born, yet his theological, philosophical, and cultural observations still feel fresh and relevant.

This short little book (160 pages)took me 5 days to read. That isn't because I wasn't interested but I found I had to read some passages two or three times to grasp what Lewis was saying. At other times his writing was very easy to understand and I enjoyed his sense of humour.

The idea of the book is that a senior devil, Screwtape, is giving pointers to a junior devil, Wormwood (you have to love the names given to the devils), about how to encourage a young English man to sin in order that his soul will belong to the devil upon his death. The time is during the Second World War and this young man has recently started attending church. For a while it looks like Wormwood will succeed as the young man falls in with a crowd who are show more "thoroughly reliable people; steady, consistent scoffers and wordlings who without any particular crimes are progressing quietly and comfortably towards" Hell (our Father's house as Screwtape refers to it). Then the young man falls in love with a Christian woman ("...such a Christian--a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, bread-and-butter miss") and the plans start to unravel. Screwtape gets so exasperated with Wormwood at one point that he turns into a large centipede.

As the book proceeds a clear picture of the struggle between good and evil is drawn. "It does not matter how small the sins provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

C.S. Lewis was an atheist who converted while at college and described himself as "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England". That may be but he went on to write some wonderful books that illuminate thoughts decades later. If you ignore the references to the Germans the time could almost be now with war in Iraq and Afghanistan and many other places. Even if you are an atheist (or an agnostic as I am) you can't help but worry about where our world is headed. As another Englishman, Edmund Burke, said "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing." show less

From this, one of the only satires (not parodies) I've read that was actually funny, I have learned mainly that it is entirely acceptable to mock Satan and his demons. Apparently, theologians have long understood that; but I didn't until after reading this--that we should go ahead and laugh at him. Why not? because if you stop and think about it, Satan is a deeply ridiculous figure, for eternally waging an obviously futile rebellion against His Maker for no reason but to satisfy his bizarrely stubborn pride. I used to think I should fear Satan just because of the danger he presents; but sometime after figuring out that it's acceptable to laugh at him, I also realized that in the first place, Satan is actually not dangerous at all to a show more Christian keeping close to God.

The chapters about Screwtape raging at the young man's being in love, and his threatening to eat Wormwood, are particularly funny; I was just rereading them and my delight motivated me to bother writing a review of something I first read over a decade ago. show less

Entertaining (there's some sharp social commentary), and I found having to reverse the psychology, as it were, a useful intellectual exercise that worked my brain nicely (and, I think, helped me get the theological points Lewis was making). My copy ends with a "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," which I found *quite* tedious, unfortunately. Well worth a read, even if you're disinclined (as I am) to take the religious aspects.... religiously. *looks askance at LW3*

Wickedly funny. Sneering but at other times understated sarcasm will either challenge or enrage (all those one star reviews) depending on your belief. Written in an epistolary style between the uber-demon Wormwood as he tries to give advice to his novice demon nephew Screwtape, as he tries to corrupt his first human soul. We only see half the conversation, but just like those people in the airport or mall talking to themselves on their Blutooth headsets, we know exactly what the other end of the line is saying. Appended with Wormwood's Toast.

Probably Lewis's best fiction book, better than the kiddie novels Narnia, or the Perelandra trilogy, or even Mere Christianity. A very fast read but easy to miss something if you do.

I welcome show more comments, but if you try to append another actual review as a comment to this review, I will just delete it. You're free to post your own review to GoodReads anytime you want. show less