Who is the title character in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters?

The title character in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is Screwtape. He is a senior demon who writes a series of advice letters to his inexperienced nephew, Wormwood, about tempting a human being.

Lewis published The Screwtape Letters in book form in 1942. The work uses a deliberately inverted perspective: readers see human spiritual life through the vocabulary and assumptions of Hell. This satirical device lets Lewis examine distraction, pride, resentment, social pressure, and self-deception while presenting the demons as bureaucratic and competitive.

Wormwood is not the title character; he is Screwtape’s nephew and the junior tempter receiving the letters. The unnamed human subject is called “the Patient” rather than being given a personal name. The book’s epistolary structure, in which each chapter is a letter, is central to its identity.