The Screwtape Letters

The saga of the patient continues with a report on the young man: “[T]he patient’s behavior during the first air raid has been the worst possible. He has been very frightened and thinks himself a great coward and therefore feels no pride; but he has done everything his duty demanded and perhaps a bit more” (165). Screwtape disparages Wormwood for failing to produce better results. He believes that it is too late for Wormwood to chip away at the intellectual foundations of the patient’s faith but suggests that he can erode it emotionally by amplifying the tendency to see everything bad as “real” in some objective sense and everything good as “mere sentiment.”

Screwtape assures Wormwood that he does “love” him—that is, he desires to eat him. It emerges that the patient has died in a state of grace and gone straight to Heaven. Screwtape is disgusted that Wormwood has “let a soul slip through [his] fingers” (171). He vows punishment for Wormwood’s failure as a tempter, signing himself “ravenously affectionate.”

Screwtape gives a speech at a banquet in honor of the young devils graduating from the Tempters’ Training College. Screwtape discusses the tastiness of the damned souls on which the devils are dining. He laments how there are fewer and fewer delicious sinners like Hitler to devour, but he takes heart in the fact that sinners are more numerous than ever.

Screwtape attributes the change to the fact that modern democratic societies tend to encourage conformity and mediocrity, making exceptional sin as rare as exceptional virtue. He considers this a triumph on the part of Hell, as there was a time when social movements like abolition, labor rights, and the movement for democracy itself threatened to transform people’s moral consciousness. However, the devils capitalized on the distinction between “behaviour that democracies like” and “behaviour that will preserve a democracy” (197); the former, he says, tends to conflate political equality with equality of all kinds (e.g., of intelligence, virtuousness, beauty, etc.), ultimately leading to a dearth of talent that jeopardizes democracy as a political system.

This, however, is not the devils’ primary goal, though Screwtape does consider true democracy somewhat less conducive to sinfulness than other forms of government. Rather, the insistence that people are identical not merely in moral value but also ability leads to resentment, discontent, and other emotions that facilitate sin. Screwtape concludes his address by relishing the wine that has been made from the souls of religious fanatics such as those labeled Pharisees in the Bible.