Screwtape is the fictional demon who writes the advice letters in C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book The Screwtape Letters.
The book is presented as a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood. Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to tempt and distract a human being known as “the Patient.”
Lewis uses this inverted viewpoint to explore pride, distraction, self-deception, resentment, and spiritual complacency. The demons’ bureaucratic language creates irony because readers are expected to recognize that their advice is morally corrupt and ultimately self-defeating.
The work began as a series of pieces broadcast on BBC radio during the Second World War before being published in book form. A related later text, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” was published separately and is not part of the original sequence of letters.