Research Paper on:
Temptations in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
C.S. Lewis "The Screwtape Letters" provides a different twist to our understanding of temptation and its ravages on the human soul and our relationship with God. Written in the  form of instructional letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to one of his apprentices, his up and coming nephew Wormwood; the Screwtape letters are a lesson in how to divert  the devout away from their relationship with God and with the morals and ethics of life. "The Screwtape Letters" offer insight to the many ways in which we can  be drawn from our commitments and responsibilities. Through "The Screwtape Letters" we learn that the fall from grace to condemnation is not necessarily a fast plummet but instead is  most often a slow and gradual slope right into the flames of hell. Screwtape is indeed an expert at pulling us away from  our walk with grace and fixing out attentions on "the stream of immediate sense experiences" (Lewis, 2001, 2) which so often translate into our doom. He recognizes our most  innate flaws and plays on those flaws, not through argument, but through diverting out attention away from that which we should be thinking about and towards that which we shouldnt.  The manner which he does so is pure stealth. Screwtape is delighted, for example, when we come into a circle of friends who are intellectually stimulating and who  pride themselves in asking questions and never accepting anything at face value, Lewis (2001, 37) describes such friends as being:  "rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world?"