The Screwtape Letters

Wormwood is a novice tempter on his first assignment. He is naïve and ignorant about humans and therefore needs the guidance of a more experienced devil. This is why Screwtape counsels him in the letters that make up the novel.

In Screwtape’s view, Wormwood is much too passive and clumsy in his tempting of the young man. Screwtape would have him influence the young man’s thoughts, feelings, and actions much more carefully. Wormwood largely seems to react when major events occur, such as the young man becoming a churchgoing Christian. Likewise, his understanding of sin is amateurish, to Screwtape’s mind, as he focuses on dramatic missteps rather than the attitudes that underpin them.

Wormwood ultimately fails to capture the young man’s soul. He has failed and will be punished and eaten by Screwtape and the devils. Given that the demons’ creed is self-interest, Lewis leaves open the possibility that Screwtape wished for this outcome all along: Wormwood may well have been set up for failure to satisfy Screwtape’s desires.

This is the term the devils use to designate the young man to whom Wormwood has been assigned as a tempter. The reader only gets Screwtape’s (unreliable) perspective on the young man’s character and behavior, but from the information provided, one can deduce that the young man is middle class and probably has some education. He does not seem to have been raised in a religious family, as his becoming a churchgoing Christian marks a change in his life.

The patient is, in short, an ordinary young man who is decent, good, and reasonably intelligent. He makes several important choices, especially to become a Christian and to pick a Christian woman to love. He does not go to war as a soldier but rather stays at home and works in civil defense. He does not seem to subscribe to the general hatred of the Germans that many English people would have felt at the start of World War II, and when he is killed in an air raid bombing, his soul goes straight to Heaven, where saints, angels, and God welcome him. Thus, he must have been in a “state of grace” despite the devils’ best efforts to entice him into sin.

There is very little information given about the object of the young man’s love. She is a moral woman who comes from a Christian family, but not one given to the kind of fanaticism that would lead them to hate others.

She does have one flaw that Screwtape hopes to exploit: She looks upon nonbelievers as silly, though her attitude is more dismissive than cruel. Screwtape wishes that she will pass this attitude on to the young man and get him to look down on and eventually despise non-Christians. Obviously, this does not happen, which suggests that the woman’s tendency toward judgment is a minor part of who she is.