ipl-logo

Subjectivism In The Screwtape Letters

1235 Words5 Pages

Subjectivism
C. S. Lewis “The Screwtape Letters” tells the story of Screwtape, a devil in Hell, writing letters to his nephew, Wormwood, who is trying to guide a patient towards Hell over God and Heaven. Lewis has in other works described his thoughts on subjectivism and an objective truth and how an objective truth is better than subjectivism. However, in “The Screwtape Letters”, Lewis is describing the view of the devil and therefore the descriptions most often become the opposite of Lewis’ beliefs. Yet, in some circumstances an objective truth applies to the devil as well. The elements in the novel describe how Screwtape uses an objective truth and reality as a means of pushing the patient towards Hell compared to Heaven, which in Scretape’s …show more content…

Bring us back food, or be food yourself” (Lewis 272), Screwtape wants Wormwood to understand how important it is to convert the patient; otherwise he will become the food himself. It does not matter how Wormwood sees the world and the fact that his patient is difficult; there is an objective truth about the rules in Hell, and if he cannot complete his task, he will be punished himself. Those are the rules of Hell and they are objectively true for everyone. Screwtape’s view on justice, reality, and Hell, shows the fact that Screwtape sees Hell as an objective truth compared to Heaven as an illusion of subjectivism. Screwtape believes that only Hell can show reality yet has primarily a negative perspective, which is what Lewis would disagree with, due to the fact that Hell is not the only place for reality just because it is a negative place surrounded by …show more content…

Screwtape has an idea that there is a distinction between what is real and what is not; an objective truth is real and subjectivism is just a fantasy: “[…] is that in al experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are ‘real’ while the spiritual elements are ‘subjective’” (Lewis 274), Screwtape believes that if Wormwood can get the patient to believe in what is real, which is the gore of the war and the fact of the war, then Wormwood can get the patient on his side, by believing in the reality of the war, which according to Screwtape is the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario of the war will help Wormwood and his patient towards Hell, because it will make the patient loose faith in God. Subjectivism on the other hand, believes in a fantasy, religion, spiritual, and sentiment, which according to Screwtape include anything good, that the people tell themselves to get through the day. Subjectivism is what people wish things to be, compared to how they really are and it is an illusion of reality compared to an objective truth that is in fact reality. Screwtape goes on about how subjectivism is a bad thing compared to objective truths, and states that “[…] but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a ‘real’ core of sexual appetite or economic association. Wars and poverty are ‘really’ horrible; peace and plenty

Show More
Related

  • Hester Prynne And Arthur Dimmesdale In The Scarlet Letter

    696 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dimmesdale then replied that it only brought him more misery. He also said, "As concerns the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined soul like mine effect towards the redemption of other souls?--or a polluted soul towards their purification?” (Hawthorne 172)

    Read More

  • Screwtape Letters And The Great Divorce Lewis Summary

    1545 Words  | 7 Pages

    C.S. Lewis claims culture is made up of sub-christian values, which are shown through moral and nonmoral actions, and ultimately this is good so Christians should freely participate in culture. Lewis outlines what he exactly means by “sub-christian” in his work Christian Reflections, in which he also give Christians a charge to engage in these things. In Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce, Lewis presents some practical examples of moral and nonmoral activities and the effects they have on faith. Some Christians shy away from engaging in culture that does not directly link to Christ, but Lewis says all of culture is a reflection of God so Christians should be enjoying the culture around them. First C.S. Lewis explains that the term “sub-christian”

    Read More

  • Prayer In The Screwtape Letters

    474 Words  | 2 Pages

    Prayer is a prevalent aspect in the Screwtape Letters. In Letter Four, Wormwood struggles to attack the prayer life on his patient. His uncle, Screwtape, advises him that it is best if the patient does not pray at all. By being a recent Christian convert, Screwtape suggests that it would be better if Wormwood could take advantage of the patient’s forgetfulness. “Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself, we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so.”

    Read More

  • Use Of Temptations In C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters

    1177 Words  | 5 Pages

    C.S. Lewis, a Christian writer from England, penned a manuscript in 1942 called The Screwtape Letters that examined the temptations presented to man by Satan. “Lewis's Screwtape Letters was certainly one of his most popular works, and by his own admission it was a work that he found easy to write” (Harwood 24). By being a Christian himself, Lewis could sympathize and identify with fellow Christians undergoing the onslaught of spiritual attacks. Christians struggle daily with the temptations of Satan similar to those that Screwtape directs his nephew, Wormwood, to employ towards the Patient. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis uses the character, Patient, to symbolize everyman and his struggles with overcoming temptations by showing how Screwtape attempts to conjure a plan for Wormwood to lure the Patient to the Devil’s camp with Satan’s insipid temptations of vanity,

    Read More

  • The Great Divorce: A Literary Analysis

    1235 Words  | 5 Pages

    In C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, Lewis is arguing that Hell is not necessarily a place where wicked people who detest God end up; Hell is a place that offers people exactly what they want. The Great Divorce presents “the reason for Hell,” which is people choosing their own wishes over God (Gibson 110). This novel reveals that the self-imprisonment of one’s greatest dreams can lead to infernal results (Gibson 113). In The Great Divorce, Lewis uses Dantean structure, the nature of Grey Town, and the various Ghosts’ interviews to prove that to live in Hell is to receive and accept everything except God and his will.

    Read More

  • Symbolism In C. S. Louis 'Screwtape Letters'

    971 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Louis created an indirect dialogue between Screwtape; a senior devil, and his protégé nephew; Wormwood. The text is a collection of letters, composed by Screwtape, addressed to Wormwood, which commentate on Wormwood’s efforts to seduce a human. The Screwtape Letters served as the principal inspiration for Concrete Wafers. Louis’ influence is instantly apparent, as the text is narrated by the ‘observer;’ an agent clearly reminiscent of Screwtape, in powers and motive alike.

    Read More

  • Screwtape Letter By C. S. Lewis

    2108 Words  | 9 Pages

    Throughout the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis envisions what hell looks like to him by food and eating motifs. Reading through the book myself, I can envision what a horrid place hell is like, what C.S. Lewis tells in the Screwtape Letters. Now, in order for you to understand, the Screwtape letters is based on demons who work for Satan to temp humans to join the dark side of hell and leave the enemy (God). In most of the part, I will be discussing the very subject of Screwtape’s toast in the Tempter’s training College and the dominant motifs of food and eating in the letters from Screwtape. People might just think hell is just a pit of fire, but its more than that, its turbulently worse than you ever thought it would be, especially from C.S. Lewis’ point of view.

    Read More

  • Essay On Screwtape Letter

    1186 Words  | 5 Pages

    While Satan, “Our Father Below,” is a self-loving, deceitful father. When everyone agrees that Lewis’s style of writing is instructive. Some say Lewis wrote the book for people to understand and feel sympathy for Satan and his followers “demons”. Lewis’s style of writing makes one better equip to reorganize Satan’s subtle deceptions in three ways: it helps people recognize distractions in our thoughts, it helps people recognize distractions

    Read More

  • Screwtape Letter Character Analysis

    670 Words  | 3 Pages

    To fail, in faith, we must first succeed in doubt and fear. For Wormwood and Screwtape to succeed in their victim falling from faith they must first feed him full of fear and doubt. Throughout the Screwtape Letters, both demons try to bring their subject to worship their father by practicing tactics that lead and misdirect their human to fall from his faith in Christianity. Fear, doubt, and insecurity are the first and foremost tools of misdirection that Screwtape tries to employ Wormwood to exploit. “The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers”.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Jimmy Santiago Baca's Who Understands Me But Me

    764 Words  | 4 Pages

    Immediately from the start, the unknown oppressors attempt to isolate the author by “build[ing] walls higher” and “paint[ing] the windows black” so that he does not establish communication with the outside world. Subsequently, the oppressors locking of his cage represents his imprisonment (Constantakis lines16-17: 278). In lines 5-9, the author’s “heart” gets “rip[ped] open” and his life “crush[ed]”, so that he does not have any goals to live for, and so that he does not live his life as he wants. The captors describe him as “beastly and fiendish”, which serves as a mental restraint to the author’s outward attitude; while having “no passage out of hell” indicates that the author will remain stuck with his woes until he can no longer handle them. The imagery creates an idea of superiority for the oppressors over the author, and their cruelty through torture.

    Read More

  • 'Gluttony In C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters'

    700 Words  | 3 Pages

    Whether in delicacy or excess, gluttony is the most readily accepted of the seven deadly sins. Guinness argues both that, in the modern world, gluttony of delicacy has replaced the gluttony of excess and the proper response to this vice is courage under suffering. When we think of gluttony, we tend to envision endless tables of food sprawled out before a man who could stand to skip a few meals, however, while this is one way in which gluttony presents itself, it is not the form we find often within the modern Christian’s life. Rather, the most common form of gluttony in the Christian’s life is that of delicacy. In his book, The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis utters these words through the pen of his character Screwtape, a demon corresponding with a demon-in-training, “Your patient’s mother… would be astonished… to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small” (Guinness, pg. 4-10).

    Read More

  • A Brave New World Essay: Truth And Happiness

    427 Words  | 2 Pages

    Truth and happiness are two things people desire, and in the novel, an impressive view of this dystopia’s two issues is described. In this society, people are created through cloning. The “World State” controls every aspect of the citizens lives to eliminate unhappiness. Happiness and truth are contradictory and incompatible, and this is another theme that is discussed in “Brave New World” (Huxley 131). In the world regulated by the government, its citizens have lost their freedom; instead, they are presented with pleasure and happiness in exchange.

    Read More

  • Pride In Jane Eyre And The Turn Of The Screw

    169 Words  | 1 Pages

    The protagonist from “The Turn of the Screw”, is perceived to be despearate as she tries to achieve her dream but her personal pride leads her to an unstable condition. The author depicts the Governess believing that to attain her goal of gaining attentionby her employer, she must be a hero. Therefore, she invents lies about seeing her predessors haunting her pupils. Nonetheless, the more times James makes the Governess mention the ghosts the more she believes they are real and they, “want to get them (the children)” (82). The Governess is blinded by making it appear she sees the ghosts that she looses herself in her own lies leading her to an unstable condition of not knowing what is real or not.

    Read More

  • Nature Of Sin In Dante's Inferno

    463 Words  | 2 Pages

    Unfortunately, Dante’s journey transitions from the wood into the depths of Hell where he and readers discover the Christian view of sin, repentance, and the need for a savior. The author introduces his readers to Jesus Christ during Virgil and Dante’s conversation about the lost souls in Limbo. In the First Circle of Hell, known as Limbo, the lost souls that did not have an opportunity to meet Jesus Christ dwell in this place. Although they did not sin, they did not have a proper relationship with God through Jesus Christ. However, Virgil testifies about Jesus’ decision into Hell when he says, “ I saw a mighty lord descend to us…

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Paradise Lost

    1305 Words  | 6 Pages

    Paradise Lost is the creative epic poem and the passionate expression of Milton’s religious and political vision, the culmination of his young literary ambition as a 17th century English poet. Milton inherited from his English predecessors a sense of moral function of poetry and an obligation to move human beings to virtue and reason. Values expressed by Sir Philip Sidney, Spencer and Jonson. Milton believes that a true poet ought to produce a best and powerful poem in order to convince his readers to adopt a scheme of life and to instruct them in a highly pleasant and delightful style. If Milton embraced the moral function of literature introduced by Sidney, Spencer and Johnson, he gave it a more religious emphasise.

    Read More

More about Subjectivism In The Screwtape Letters

Open Document