In C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, the junior demon Wormwood receives the letters written by his uncle Screwtape. The book presents a series of fictional instructions about tempting a human being away from faith and virtue.
Lewis published the work in book form in 1942. Screwtape’s advice is deliberately written from a demon’s perspective, so the moral lessons emerge through irony: strategies that demons praise reveal the habits, distractions, self-deceptions, and resentments that damage human character.
Wormwood is assigned to a particular human “patient,” while Screwtape acts as an experienced adviser within the bureaucracy of Hell. The names are invented, but the structure allows Lewis to examine ordinary moral life without presenting a conventional sermon from the narrator’s point of view.
A common mix-up is to call Screwtape the recipient because his name appears in the title. He is actually the letter writer. Wormwood is the younger demon whose professional progress and failures are discussed throughout the correspondence.