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Lanie King
Mrs. E. Richardson
University English II
16 November 2009
The Use of Irony in The Screwtape Letters
Thesis: In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ use of irony exemplifies distinctions between God
and Satan’s attitude toward human beings; Lewis does this through the use of innuendos,
sarcasm, and ironic inversions.
I.
Innuendos
A. Uncover society’s thoughts
1. About church
2. About prayer
B. Illustrate the depth of God’s love
C. Give explanations for trials of people
II. Sarcasm
A. Through society’s ideas of Satan and devils
B. Through God’s purpose for people
C. Through God’s advantages
III. Ironic inversions
A. Manipulation of names
1.
God
2. Satan, Hell, and devils
3. Humans
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B. Attacks against pleasures
1.
Love
2. Joy
C. Encouragement of undesired characteristics and thoughts
1.
Cowardice
2. Fatigue
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Lanie King
Mrs. E. Richardson
University English II
16 November 2009
The Use of Irony in The Screwtape Letters
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is a book of thirty-one letters, or chapters, written
from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew and a junior devil, Wormwood. In these letters,
Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to distract his “patient,” a middle-aged male, from his
newly-found faith in the “Enemy,” or God. His instruction includes enticing the man to rely on
materialism and logic, form judgmental opinions about the Body of Christ, create his own idea of
God instead of who He really is, act on temptations such as lust and gluttony, find pride in his
“humility,” and so on. Although Wormwood attempts to lure his patient by these means, he fails
in doing so. In his last letter, Screwtape conveys his disappointment in Wormwood because his
patient dies and goes to Heaven. C.S. Lewis’s crafty use of satire becomes evident in the book’s
comical plot that a senior devil would write letters to a junior devil; he does this through various
types of irony to expose the reality of Satan’s temptations and God’s love to his readers. In The
Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ use of irony exemplifies distinctions between God and Satan’s
attitude toward human beings; Lewis does this through the use of innuendos, sarcasm, and ironic
inversions.
In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis uses innuendos to demonstrate differences between God
and Satan’s attitudes toward human beings.
Peter Schakel says, “Much of the time what
Screwtape writes is accurate description, straightforward statement of fact: the irony comes not
through reversal, but in seeing the truth for what it is” (139). Schakel’s quotation defines Lewis’
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use of innuendos; Screwtape makes ironic yet derogatory statements that, when considered, hold
much truth. Lewis uses this essential element to uncover society’s thoughts about church and
prayer, illustrate the depth of God’s love, and give explanations for the trials of people.
First, Lewis uses innuendos to reveal readers’ judgmental thoughts about prayer and
church that readers do not initially recognize they have. Leonard Feinberg, author of
Introduction to Satire, says that satirists offer “an accurate picture of the world to audiences
whose vision and judgment [has] been so perverted by sentimental conditioning that they refused
to recognize the unpleasant truth when they were shown it” (63). Once finished reading one of
Screwtape’s innuendos, a reader might say, “Do I think that? No, I cannot really think that.”
For example, Screwtape tells Wormwood that his patient’s idea of the Church is a way to distract
him from God: “All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new
building estate” (6). He continues to tell Wormwood that his patient only recognizes his fellow
church members as those who “sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or
odd clothes” (6). Screwtape’s assumptions of this man are comical, but, if readers assess their
spiritual lives, they might find that the patient’s judgmental thoughts are true for them as well.
Lewis also reveals man’s sinful critique of churches when Screwtape says, “In the second place,
the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a
pupil” (82). Screwtape comments on the man’s lacking desire to pray because of his shame in
the presence of God. Screwtape says, “He will want his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread
nothing so much as effective contact with the Enemy. His aim will be to let sleeping worms lie”
(59). Christian readers, again, sympathize with this man because many find that they have the
same attitude towards prayer. Through Screwtape’s innuendos about the patient, Lewis
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challenges the own reader’s opinions and encourages him to seek out God’s true intentions for
the Church and prayer.
In order to show differences between Satan’s attitudes toward humans and God’s, Lewis
also uses innuendos to illustrate the depth of God’s love. Schakel says, “Screwtape’s
straightforward statements are accurate summaries of Christian truths, expressions of what Lewis
believed and regarded as important teaching” (139). Screwtape’s ignorance of God’s love allows
Lewis to demonstrate the very essence and truth of it to his readers. One critic says,
“[Screwtape’s] inability to comprehend how one being could really love another from
disinterested motives is so perplexing to Screwtape” (Harwood 27). For instance, Screwtape
writes to Wormwood, “One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His
service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an
appalling truth” (38). Screwtape’s innuendo that God’s love is “appalling” suggests it is a
negative thing; however, it is, what Lewis saw, an accurate description of God’s love and man’s
“real liberation” (Harwood 26). In another letter, Screwtape says, “He really loves the hairless
bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken
away with His left” (72). His innuendo describes God’s love and provisions for His people.
Through these ironic truths, Screwtape’s innuendos exemplify differences between God’s love
and Satan’s lack of it.
Not only does Lewis use innuendos to demonstrate God’s love but to offer
explanations to readers about the trials they face if God loves them so much. In one of
Screwtape’s letters to Wormwood, Screwtape explains that God uses tribulations in the lives of
humans to mold them into “what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants – ‘sons’ is the word He
uses” (7). God allows this metamorphosis to take place, according to Screwtape, when “He
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therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He
sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’” (7). Screwtape says that, once humans
get through these trials and times of dryness, they are “harder to tempt” (8). Obviously, Lewis
uses Screwtape’s innuendo to explain to his readers that God uses trials and tribulations to
strengthen believers’ faith. He desires to give humans freedom but yielding to His will during
these trials. Screwtape cannot understand this concept and, therefore, thinks it is absurd.
Screwtape’s innuendos demonstrate a Christian truth that God hard times as a period of growth
for Christians.
Lewis also uses sarcasm throughout The Screwtape Letters in order to demonstrate
differences between the attitudes of Satan and God toward humans. David Worcester, author of
The Art of Satire, says, “[Sarcasm] may be distinguished from the more literary kinds of irony by
the fact that it never deceives its victim” (78). Screwtape often states simple, Christian truths in
a mocking manner towards his victims. He aims his sarcasm at society’s ideas of Satan and
devils, God’s purpose for His people, and God’s advantages over Satan.
First, Screwtape sarcastically mocks society’s ideas of Satan and devils. Lewis voices
what he believes is an important truth through Screwtape’s sarcasm on this matter. One critic
says, “Hell is not served, Lewis seemed to say, if either a man . . . deliberately continues to use
‘broken myths’ which he admits are quite insufficient for the reality they represent” (White 53).
Lewis wants readers to understand the reality of Hell and the activeness of Satan in the world
and realize their naivety. Screwtape echoes society’s unawareness of Satan when he says, “It is
funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is
done by keeping things out” (16). Screwtape tells Wormwood, “Our policy . . . is to conceal
ourselves” (31). In order to do this, Screwtape advises Wormwood to “suggest to him a picture
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of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that . . .he therefore
cannot believe in you” (32). Screwtape sarcastically brings to light society’s honest views of
devils; Lewis suggests that these views actually give Satan the advantage because humans do not
fully realize the reality of Satan at work in the world. He also shows, through Screwtape’s
sarcasm, that Satan wants to conceal himself, but God wants to reveal Himself.
Screwtape also uses sarcasm when he tells Wormwood about God’s advantages over the
powers of Satan; Lewis deliberately assures his readers through Screwtape’s sarcasm that God
has the “upper hand” on Satan. Firstly, Screwtape writes to Wormwood, “Remember, he is not,
like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the
Enemy!) you don’t realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary” (2). The
“advantage” Screwtape refers to is Jesus, God’s son in the form of Man. Unlike Satan’s devils,
God can sympathize with humans; the writer of Hebrews asserts, “For we do not have a High
Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet
without sin” (Impact Bible, Heb. 6.6). In another quotation, Screwtape tells Wormwood of a
time when he tried to distract his own patient from God’s voice when he suggested it was
lunchtime; Screwtape says, “The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know
how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than
lunch” (3). Screwtape says here that God has the advantage of speaking to Christians without
devils overhearing Him. Screwtape tells Wormwood, “We fight under cruel disadvantages”
(118). Through Screwtape’s sarcasm, readers understand that God does have the advantage over
Satan.
Screwtape sarcastically and disgustingly remarks about God’s purpose for humans as
well. He says, “He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of
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Himself” (39). Screwtape, through his sarcasm, suggests that God wants Christians to imitate
Him. He continues to tell Wormwood, “We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants
servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty
and would be filled; He is full and flows over” (39). In this quotation, Screwtape echoes Lewis’
point that God does have a fulfilling purpose for humans, unlike Satan’s only purpose to “feed”
on them. Finally, Screwtape reveals God’s purpose for humans when he explains that God wants
humans to submit themselves to Him while still being the individual he created them to be:
“Remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the
distinctness of every one of them” (65). Again, God does value each individual, but Screwtape’s
sarcasm shows that Satan does not.
Finally, readers immediately recognize The Screwtape Letters’ numerous ironic
inversions a couple of pages into the book. Feinberg describes the irony of The Screwtape Letters
as a “praise of harmful things under the pretense that they are good” (179). His description of
irony in the book refers to Lewis’ creative ironic inversions in Screwtape’s “praise of harmful
things” throughout his letters to Wormwood. For example, Screwtape’s manipulated names for
God, Satan and his devils, and humans demonstrate differences between a devil’s thoughts and
God’s. Screwtape also encourages Wormwood to create undesired circumstances and thoughts
in his patient’s mind. Screwtape not only commends harmful things but scoffs pleasures that
readers view enjoyable such as love and joy.
In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape’s names and descriptions of God echo Lewis’ ironic
manipulation of names. The reader quickly finds the irony in Screwtape’s first letter; Schakel
says, “The juxtaposition of ‘the Enemy’ with ‘Our Father Below’ makes the ironic reversal fully
evident” (139). As Screwtape discusses God’s creation of human pleasures, he says, “He’s a
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hedonist at heart . . . He’s vulgar, Wormwood. He has a bourgeois mind,” which reverses the
reader’s idea of God and Satan (118). In another example, Screwtape describes God to
Screwtape: “You see how groveling, how unspiritual, how irredeemably vulgar He is!” (82).
Obviously, his remark about God does not agree with readers’ views of God. Lewis uses
Screwtape’s inverted descriptions of God to show differences between Him and Satan.
On the other hand, Screwtape’s ironic descriptions and names of Hell, Satan, and his
fellow devils exemplify favor for them rather disgust. When Screwtape writes to Wormwood, he
refers to Satan as “Our Father Below” (2) or “High Command” (133) and Hell as “Our Father’s
House” (29). One critic suggests, “The Screwtape Letters presents a satiric portrayal of Hell as a
gigantic modern and tyrannical bureaucracy” (Nilsen 175). Screwtape calls this bureaucracy, or
Hell, a “Lowerarchy” rather than a hierarchy (106). In his fourth letter, Screwtape exemplifies
this idea when he calls Wormwood “a junior tempter to the under-secretary of a department”
(15). Screwtape mentions “Training College” (37) to Wormwood as a type of institution for
devils and “textbook methods” (32) that the college teaches. Screwtape mentions one
philosophy of the Training College: “Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation? . . .
the repeated return to a level from which [humans] repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and
peaks” (37). Besides the Training College, there is an “Intelligence Department” (175), “Secret
Police” (117), and a “House of Correction for Incompetent Tempters” (117). The idea that Hell
is organized in this manner exemplifies Lewis’ creative use of manipulated titles. Furthermore,
Screwtape also mentions fellow devils other than Wormwood like “Glubose” (11), “Scabtree”
(24), “Triptweez” (49), “Slugbob” (99), “Toadpipe” (121), and “Slumtrimpet” (129). A reader
immediately sees the ironic manipulation of these names as they all suggest drabness or
rottenness.
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Lewis’ manipulation of names for ironic purposes is not only seen in Screwtape’s names
for supernatural beings, but in human beings as well. In his second letter to Wormwood,
Screwtape writes, “I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian” (5).
Schakel says that Screwtape’s name for humans as patients becomes “satiric if ‘patient’
establishes an implicit parallel between the devil and physicians or psychiatrists” (138).
Wormwood’s human is referred to as his “patient” numerous times throughout the book, which
demonstrates the inversion that Satan, not God, is the Great Physician. Furthermore, Screwtape
does not hesitate to disclose his disgust for humans; he calls them “loathsome little replicas of
[God]” (38), “creatures” (40), “vermin” (65), “hairless bipeds” (72), and “organisms” (94).
These ironic and insulting names for human beings demonstrate the denigrated value of people to
Satan as opposed to God.
Lewis not only uses Screwtape’s manipulation of names to depict ironically inverted
differences between God and Satan, but he uses Screwtape’s attacks against pleasures as well.
Throughout Screwtape’s letters to Wormwood, he encourages Wormwood to guard his patient
against pleasures or use them to lure the man away. However, Screwtape is well aware that God
created pleasures: “All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our
research so far has not enabled us to produce one” (44). Screwtape does not understand why
God would give humans such gifts; he only knows that he must use these pleasures for his gain.
One critic makes an interesting point: “Failing to understand their divine justification, Screwtape
must nevertheless turn gifts from God into a hindrance to God” (Harwood 31). Screwtape
encourages Wormwood to do precisely this in an attack against the pleasures of his patient.
Through attacks against love and joy in his letters, Screwtape shows his ironic distaste for
pleasures that Lewis’ readers would enjoy. First, Screwtape makes it clear to Wormwood that
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“falling in love is not, in itself, necessarily favorable either to us or to the other side” (103). In a
later letter, Screwtape scorns Wormwood for letting his human fall in love: “Your man is in love
– and the worst kind he could possibly have fallen into . . . a Christian” (117). Evidently, readers
find the irony in Screwtape’s hatred for love because it is a pleasure they enjoy. Screwtape’s
advice about this pleasure to Wormwood is to force his patient to fall into a more secular love:
“It is an incomparable recipe for prolonged, ‘noble’, romantic, tragic adulteries, ending, if all
goes well, in murders and suicides” (102). Screwtape also discourages joy and prompts
Wormwood to attack this pleasure. He writes, “And anyway, why should the creature be
happy?” (79). Screwtape disapproves of anything that stirs joy or happiness within a human.
For example, he despises music and calls it a “detestable art” in one of his letters (53). He also
rebukes Wormwood for allowing his patient to partake in two other pleasures: reading a book he
really enjoys and taking a walk through beautiful country (63-64). Obviously, Lewis shows
differences between God’s desires for people to indulge in pleasures and Satan’s through
Screwtape’s ironic dislikes of humans’ enjoyments.
Lewis also ironically points out differences between God and Satan through
Screwtape’s encouragement to Wormwood to bring about undesired qualities and circumstances
in his patient’s life. Feinberg says that a satirist “makes an obnoxious character express approval
of a foolish or vicious idea, praising it for reasons which the reader is likely to reject” (92).
Lewis uses this satirical technique through Screwtape’s praises of the patient’s cowardice and
fatigue. In one of his letters, Screwtape writes, “Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely
painful – horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember . . . you should therefore
first defeat his courage” (160). Obviously, Screwtape encourages fear, a quality a reader does
not wish to have; however, Paul writes in Second Timothy, “For God has not given us a spirit of
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fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (Impact Bible, 2 Tim. 1.7). Lewis gives
readers an indirect ultimatum through this reversal of courage from God or cowardice from
Satan. Screwtape also encourages, not absolute exhaustion, but fatigue in Wormwood’s patient:
“The paradoxical thing is that moderate fatigue is a better soil for peevishness than absolute
exhaustion. . . To produce the best results from the patient’s fatigue, you must feed him false
hopes” (166). Again, fatigue is not a quality that man desires, nor is it a quality that God gives
him. Matthew quotes Jesus, Son of God: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest” (Impact Bible, Mat. 11.28). Screwtape’s encouragement of cowardice
and fatigue are ironic inversions of the courage and rest God offers to humans.
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is packed from cover to cover with irony
through letters from Screwtape, a senior-level devil, to Wormwood, a junior-level devil. A
reader automatically detects Lewis’ use of irony when they recognize the book’s plot. The book
does give readers a laugh, but it also reveals important Christian truths about the differences
between God and His love for humans and Satan and his hatred for them. Lewis uses various
types of irony in order to reveal those differences to his readers. Firstly, Screwtape’s humorous
and derogatory innuendos uncover society’s hidden thoughts about church and prayer, paint a
beautiful picture of God’s love, and give readers an explanation for their trials if God loves them
so much. Secondly, Screwtape’s cutting sarcasm about society’s ideas of Satan and devils,
God’s purpose for people, and God’s advantages over Screwtape, his fellow devils, and Satan
exemplifies differences in God’s attitude towards humans and Satan’s. Finally, Screwtape’s
numerous ironic inversions through his names for God, Satan, Hell, and devils, and humans as
well as his attacks against human pleasures and undesired circumstances also demonstrate
important differences between Satan and God. Lewis’ crafty use of irony in The Screwtape
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Letters ultimately fulfill the book’s purpose: to show differences in God’s unfailing love and
Satan’s efforts to fight it.
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Works Cited
Feinberg, Leonard. Introduction to Satire. Ames, Iowa: Iowa Sate UP, 1967.
Harwood, Larry D. “Lewis’s Screwtape Letters: The Ascetic Devil and the Aesthetic God.”
Mythlore 24.2 (2004): 24-34. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Mississippi U for
Women Lib., Columbus, MS. 21 September 2009 <http://go.galegroup.com>.
IMPACT: The Student Leadership Bible: New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson,
2008.
Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: HarperCollins P, 1996.
Nilsen, Don L.F. Humor in Twentieth-Century British Literature: A Reference Guide.
Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 2000.
Schakel, Peter J. “The Satiric Imagination of C.S. Lewis.” Studies in the Literary Imagination
22.2 (Fall 1989): 129-48. Literary Reference Center. EBSCOhost. Mississippi U for
Women Lib., Columbus, MS. 26 August 2009 <http://web.ebscohost.com>.
White, William Luther. The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis. Nashville: Abingdon P, 1969.
Worcester, David. The Art of Satire. New York: Russell, 1940.