A Review on the Screwtape Letters

"To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience with the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. 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. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself--creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. 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."
                    --The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, chapter 8

The above excerpt was my favorite paragraph in reading 'The Screwtape Letters' during my break at the end of the summer. I managed to pick up the book and read it in roughly a week, which is quite the accomplishment for someone like me with ADD tendencies (esp. when it comes to reading.) But I could not put this book down.

It is absolutely genius writing; C. S. Lewis manages to turn everything on its head in impeccable fashion. As I read I couldn't help but think what kind of care had to go in to portraying the world, and humans, the way Satan sees it. And it is absolutely intriguing to read a book written from the point of view of the antagonist. I found myself rooting for the patient (the human under Wormwood's care), who we never have any direct contact with; we never find out his name, which, of course, is because that kind of personal information is absolutely unimportant to demons.

So I will close with my other favorite excerpt, which speaks directly to me, and probably to a lot of you as well:

"Of course, I know that the Enemy also wants to detach men from themselves, but in a different way. remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When He talks of their losing their selves, He only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever."

          --The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis, chapter 13