BBC Radio 4, 18-22 November 2013
Broadcast to mark the fiftieth
anniversary of C. S. Lewis' death (on the same day that J. F. Kennedy was assassinated), The Screwtape Letters is
an epistolary novel written by Senior Demon Screwtape to his subordinate Wormwood, who has been charged with securing the
damnation of a British man known only as "The Patient."
First published in 1942, this satirical work emphasizes the importance of sustaining the Christian
faith during times of extreme stress - for example World War Two. Wormwood is given various strategies to help undermine
the Patient's faith but fails to carry any of them out with any success. On the contrary, the more extreme the circumstances
(bombing, homelessness), the stronger the Patient's faith becomes. Screwtape's vision of a dog-eat-dog world where individuals
are all out for themselves fails to be realized.
As I listened to Simon Russell Beale's evocative reading of the work (he has a particularly
evocative voice that vividly communicated the various tones of Screwtape's discourse -hectoring, persuasive, irate
and finally exasperated), I was reminded of Ben Jonson's 1616 comedy The Devil is An Ass, where an apprentice demon
is sent to earth to practise his wiles, but finds himself completely lost. The major difference between the two works
is one of tone: whereas Jonson satirizes the rapacity of the Jacobean world (which is far more evil than even the Devil could
imagine), Lewis wants to show how faith can transcend all mortal sins, including sex, love, pride and gluttony as well as
war. Although the Patient dies at the end of the novel - the victim of an air raid - he slips through Wormwood's fingers
and ascends to Heaven.
The Screwtape Letters is perhaps Lewis' most popular work for adults (as opposed to the Chronicles
of Narnia which were intended for children). This Book of the Week production showed why: it was both accessible
yet very funny.
