The Screwtape Letters, Session 2: Waking Up to Reality

We are just at the beginning of our 8 sessions on The Screwtape Letters. There is still time to join.

Letters 5, 6, and 7 are written against the backdrop of the Second World War, but their actual subject is how the mind responds to uncertainty.

The three letters move through a single pattern. Letter 5 shows how a crisis can puncture the illusion that ordinary life will continue indefinitely. Letter 6 shows how uncertainty tempts the mind to abandon the present for imagined futures. Letter 7 shows how even serious commitments can become substitutes for the inner work they were meant to serve.

Letter 5 begins with Screwtape expressing dissatisfaction with his tempter nephew.

Wormwood has written back to say he is “delirious with joy” because Europe has gone to war. He has been savoring the patient’s sleepless nights, playing on his fear, working the “terror-pictures of the future” like a musician working a crowd. He is very pleased with himself. Screwtape’s reply is brisk and contemptuous: Wormwood is not delirious. He is drunk. He has tasted, for the first time, the anguish of a human soul, and it has gone to his head. This is understandable in a young tempter. It is also, Screwtape explains, a serious professional error.