The Screwtape Letters

This chapter shifts to a consideration of the sin of lust. Screwtape encourages Wormwood to take advantage in the inherent challenges humans have with love and marriage. With the patient, who is still single, there is the potential for irresponsible sexual behavior. “Any sexual infatuation whatever, so long as it intends marriage, will be regarded as ‘love,’ and ‘love’ will be held to excuse a man from all guilt, and to protect him from the consequences, of marrying a heathen, a fool, or a wanton” (97).

Screwtape continues on the subjects of love, sex, and marriage. He advises Wormwood to “feed him on the minor poets and fifth-rate novelists of the old school until you have made him believe that ‘Love’ is both irresistible and meritorious . . . it is an incomparable recipe for prolonged, ‘noble,’ romantic, tragic adulteries, ending, if all goes well, in murders and suicides” (102).

Screwtape continues to write enthusiastically about the potential for lust in human beings, including the targeted young man. Screwtape describes all young men’s desires as having a dark side that makes them desire a partner in sin.