The Screwtape Letters

The themes in the book revolve around the devils’ strategies for tempting human beings. If a human being is directly connected to his or her experiences, he or she is more likely to find life pleasurable and to be peaceful and content. This condition engenders gratitude towards God the Creator. 

Much later in the narrative, Screwtape encourages Wormwood to plant more thoughts of separation and alienation in the young man’s mind. Screwtape wants the patient to see non-believers as somehow inferior to him and his beloved and her family. 

Screwtape believes that human beings can be easily distracted through their thoughts. The devils take these opportunities to guide humans into sinful patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. 

By contrast, direct experiences of pleasure, beauty, and love in life can lead human beings toward God and Heaven. In the case of the young man, this happens with his having a pair of pleasant experiences: the first reading a good book that he enjoys and the second taking a walk through the natural beauty of the countryside to a picturesque old mill. These direct experiences put the young man in a frame of mind where he is open to the spirit of the God of love.