The Screwtape Letters Analysis

Milton presents Satan in a very human light, showing that despite his dramatic words, his “count 'nance cast… doubt” and he has insecurities like any human (Milton 526-527). This viewpoint is very contrary to his audience’s expectations of the devil, who more often is presented as a brutish being. His journey of self-awareness begins with the realization that the only thing that makes a place horrible is mindset, and the process of making his own “Heav 'n of Hell,” and to attempt to make “a Hell of Heav 'n” fulfills the traditional role of the hero finding their true purpose and their will to fulfill it (255). The significance of Satan’s realization that he is in Hell, defeated by his adversary, does not deter him. Like Aeneas, Satan’s journey to the underworld allowed him to realize his true purpose.

The Devil as a Personified Doubt in The Brothers Karamazov In The Brother’s Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky ambiguously presents the existence of God and the existence of the Devil. Through Ivan Fyodorovich, a rationalist and an adamant skeptic of religion, Dostoevsky wrestles with the idea of an all-loving God, and draws upon the idea that the Grand Inquisitor supports the intentions of the Devil. In this paper, I will discuss the existence of the Devil as a “personal” entity rather than a “real” figure by drawing conclusions from Ivan’s philosophy articulated in “The Grand Inquisitor” and Ivan’s encounter with the Devil incarnated in “The Devil. Ivan Fyodorovich’s Nightmare.”

In Dante’s Inferno each sin gets its own individual type of punishment. The sins and the punishments get worse deeper into Hell. Contrary to this, it is made apparent in the Bible that God does not view one sin as worse than the other. The New Testament says, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (New International Version, James. 2.10). A verse like this shows even one sin is enough to separate us from God, making any man made hierarchy between sins unnecessary.

Since Jesus fought the Dark Thing in the book, we know the Dark Thing represents the devil. Although some people think Meg’s first and dangerous experience of tessering is only used to prove that this book is an adventure story, they fail to realize that the dangers of tessering proves that the Dark Thing, again, compares with the devil because whenever Meg tessers, she has to travel through the Dark Thing; consequently, Meg either experiences excruciating pain, or she receives short-term paralysis. In conclusion, Madeleine L 'Engle 's purpose in using the Dark Thing

Another obstacle Dante faces is the sympathy he feels for the shades. Dante's sympathy for the shades is an obstacle because it's keeping him from going to Heaven; by sympathizing and pitying the shades, Dante is questioning God's justice. To God all the shades belong in Hell because they chose to sin. Dante must get rid of his feelings in order to enter Heaven. He does this by adjusting to Hell.

While Faustus' practice of black magic and his pact with Mephastophilis condemns him to damnation, until almost the last lines of the play Faustus is conscious of the possibility of salvation if he repents. He is reminded throughout the play that if he truly repents, God will forgive him. It is for this reason that every time Faustus called out to God Mephastophilis is alarmed, because he knows that Faustus could be saved if he only repents and asks for forgiveness. The true conflict of the play is a battle between good and evil, and the prize is Faustus' soul. Faustus himself is represented through the Good and Evil Angles, they represent the two sides of Faustus’s character that are constantly fighting over which way he will turn.

To spare him the result of his own activity is to insult his ideal nature by denying his freedom. Hell is the Creator's final tribute of respect to the being he made in his own image; and, as both Wisdom and Love imply recognition of the essential nature of their object, they concur with Justice in demanding the punishment of the sinner” (125). In this part of the comedy, the reader is introduced to the theme of justice as correlated to a human's exact actions during his or her lifetime. Blow describes The Inferno to be full of varying punishments that are simply a correlation to the misconduct that was done while living. “

Blaise Paschal was a French mathematician and philosopher who building an argument on why one should believe in God, it is named Paschal’s Wager. According to Paschal’s Wager, it is better to have a belief in God than not believing in Him. God is known for punishing those who go against or do not believe in Him. Therefore, Paschal stated you should believe in God because after death you can be rewarded with an eternity in heaven. However, if you do not believe in God and he does exist you will be damned to the eternal suffering that is brought by hell.

The “intellect” itself can be deduced as being God. This version of Hell, however, was born from Dante’s mind after being banished from Florence. Much of the Inferno is written as satire, but the morals it holds still present themselves within the larger Catholic ideology. In Thomas Thayer’s The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment, he conducts a detailed analysis of the Bible’s hell and it’s origins.

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…

The Bible says in James 2:19, “Thou believest there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” Clive Staples Lewis, the author of The Screwtape Letters, “viewed human beings as being on the road of life progressing toward a state of heaven or hell” (Christensen 27). “Each moral choice [an individual makes] furthers [the individual] along the road and slowly changes [the individual] into a more heavenly of hellish creature” (qtd. in Christensen 27).

“The descent to hades is the same from every place” said the ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras. Nowhere is that sentiment anywhere better mirrored than in C.S. Lewis’ book “The Screwtape Letters,” which consists of a series of letters written by an elder demon (the title character) to a junior devil advising him about how to tempt souls to hell; he speaks often of the “time-tested” ways of seducing lost souls. Moreover though, the work illustrates the society of the hell in which the demons dwell as an eternal power struggle not only with God but also with each other; Screwtape himself lays out his worldview as that “all selves are by their nature in competition.” The demonic struggle to dominate and control others is the modus vivendi

“And they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord.” This is the terrifying inevitable truth found in 2 Thessalonians 1:9. Many people have come up with interpretations of Heaven and Hell to provide a better understanding of life after death. C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce is just one of many stories written to give Christians and non believers insight. The novel follows a man who finds himself presented with a choice to stay in Hell, where he originally found himself, or to make a decision to journey to Heaven.