I was thinking of how Lewis constructed "The Screwtape Letters," (forgive me, I'm a dorky Lit major) and I thought it interesting how they are all directed towards Wormwood, Screwtape's nephew, but we never read Wormwood's side of the correspondence, and can only surmise what he wrote through Screwtape's letters. Could Lewis be subversively casting the reader as Wormwood? This book isn't exactly a dialogue, it isn't as if we've tapped a wire from Hell and can hear both parties converse. Rather, it's Screwtape soliloquizing on subjects handed to him by some shifty unseen stage hand. What does everyone else think?
Labels: letterish thoughts
posted by natalie at 8:57 PM
2 Comments:
Didn't someone in class do a report on a book by Lewis with much this same style of writing? A book with just his correspondence with someone but not the replies?
To go too much into the story (with all probability) Perhaps in this semi-fictional world, the return letters are not as easily come by because they are being sent further into Hell rather than further towards our world? Just a thought.
Yeah, I read Lewis's Letters to Malcolm which is written in much the same style. It is letters from C.S. Lewis where often times you can tell that he is responding to something Malcolm said, but you don't actually get to read it. When I read the Malcolm Letters sometimes I found myself assuming the role of Malcolm and asking the questions that Lewis would later go on to answer in a later letter. In the Screwtape Letters, I don't find myself taking the viewpoint of Wormwood with anywhere near the frequency I played Malcolm, but the vast difference in their roles might play into that.
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