Please understand that no one here will do your work for you. However, we will be happy to read over whatever you come up with and make suggestions and/or corrections.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters
Please post what you think.
Over the course of The Screwtape Letters, the state of the patient's soul fluctuates as he experiences a conversion, doubt, dangerous friendships, war, love, and finally, in death, oneness with God. What major strategies does Screwtape use to tempt the patient into the Devil's camp? Why do these temptations fail? In what ways can the patient be seen as an Everyman?
2 answers
Screwtape scolds Wormwood because Wormwood finds enjoyment in human death. Screwtape reminds him that keeping people on earth longer allows temptations more time to tie them down. “The truth is that the Enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to like in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else. That is why we must often wish long to our patients; seventy years is not a day too much for the difficult task of unraveling their souls from Heaven and building up a firm attachment to the earth” (Letter 28). Screwtape says that knitting a man down to earth secures more satisfaction than death. He states that the belief that death is a negative event is the patients’ own propaganda. Instead, Screwtape believes death could be a good thing for “The Enemy”. Screwtape wants Wormwood to keep the Patient hidden from the truth during his life on the earth so that he can tempt him into the Devil’s Camp. Screwtape’s temptation strategy fails because the Patient is meant for God’s eternal world in Heaven and not the earth. The Patient has so far escaped the wordly friends Wormwood tries to tempt him with, he falls in love with a Christian woman and in result is “immune” from Wormwood’s attacks on his chastity, and also has escaped methods which would have corrupted his spiritual life. The Patient is in fact not attached to the earth. Before Wormwood has time to “unravel” his soul from its intended destination, the patient meets his death and eternal life by joining God in Heaven.
1 answer