A 1-Sentence Summary of Each of Screwtape’s Letters

The Screwtape Letters is a satirical Christian apologetic novel written by C. S. Lewis, first published in book form in February 1942. The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior Demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter. The uncle's mentorship pertains to the nephew's responsibility for securing the damnation of a British man known only as "the Patient".

Get the book here.

Andrew Naselli is Research Manager for D. A. Carson and Administrator of Themelios. He has written a one sentence summary of each chapter or letter.

• Make him preoccupied with ordinary, “real” life—not arguments or science.
• Make him disillusioned with the church by highlighting people he self-righteously thinks are strange or hypocritical.
• Annoy him with “daily pinpricks” from his mother.
• Keep him from seriously intending to pray at all, and if that fails, subtly misdirect his focus to himself or an object rather than a Person
• Don’t hope for too much from a war [in this case, World War II] because the Enemy often lets our patients suffer to fortify them and tantalize us.
• Capitalize on his uncertainty, divert his attention from the Enemy to himself, and redirect his malice to his everyday neighbors and his benevolence to people he does not know.
• Keep him ignorant of your existence, and make him either an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist who regards his cause as the most important part of Christianity.
• Make good use of your patient’s series of troughs and peaks (i.e., “the law of undulation”), and beware that the Enemy relies on the troughs more than the peaks.
• Capitalize on trough periods by tempting him with sensual pleasures (especially sex), making him content with his moderated religion, and directly attacking his faith as merely a “phase.”
• Convince him to blend in with his new worldly acquaintances.
• Understand the four causes of laughter (joy, fun, the joke proper, and flippancy), and shrewdly use jokes and flippancy.
• Don’t underestimate the power of “very small sins” because “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one.”
• Don’t allow him to experience real pleasures because they are a touchstone of reality.
• Make him proud of his humility; use both vainglory and false modesty to keep him from humility’s true end.
• Make him live in the future rather than the present.
• Encourage church-hopping.
• Encourage gluttony through delicacy rather than excess.
• Convince him that the only respectable ground for marriage is “being in love.”
• Understand that the Enemy does not genuinely love humans (but we don’t know what his real motive is).
• Don’t give up if your direct attacks on his chastity fail; try to arrange a desirable marriage.
• Convince him to use the pronoun “my” in the fully possessive sense of ownership (e.g., “my time,” “my boots,” “my wife,” and “my God”).
• Understand that the Enemy has filled His world full of pleasures and that you must twist them before you can use them.
• Encourage him to embrace a “historical Jesus” and to treat Christianity as merely a means to a political end such as social justice.
• Confuse him with spiritual pride for being part of an elite set.
• Replace “mere Christianity” with “Christianity And” by increasing his horror of “the same old thing” and thus increasing his desire for novelty.
• Sow seeds of “unselfishness” during his courtship.
• Twist his prayers.
• Guard his life so that he grows old because real worldliness takes time.
• Defeat his courage, and make him a coward.
• Capitalize on his fatigue, and manipulate his emotions with the word “real.”
• His end is inexplicable, but we must win in the end.