In C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape addresses his letters to Wormwood.
The 1942 book is written as a series of fictional instructions from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to Wormwood, a younger tempter assigned to influence a human “patient.” Lewis uses the demonic viewpoint to satirize temptation and expose habits such as pride, distraction, resentment, and self-deception.
The work is an epistolary satire rather than a conventional narrative. Because the advice is deliberately indirect and morally inverted, readers must infer Lewis’s intended critique from Screwtape’s recommendations.
Screwtape is the letter writer, while Wormwood is the recipient and junior demon. The two names are sometimes reversed by readers who remember the title character but not the book’s letter format.