“And anyway, why should the creature be happy? Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape” (Lewis 41). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"? Get the original essay In the preface to The Screwtape Letters, author and Christian apologist CS Lewis essentially clarifies the target audience of the work: " There are two equal and opposite errors our race can fall into regarding demons. The first is not to believe in their existence. The other is to believe in it and to have an excessive and unhealthy interest in it. They themselves are equally pleased with both errors and greet a materialist or a magician with equal pleasure” (Lewis, preface). In this epistolary novel, Screwtape, an elderly devil, teaches his nephew and "junior tempter" how to effectively capture the soul of his assigned human, to whom only "the patient" refers. Screwtape describes in detail tactics to unconsciously conquer and steal the patient's devotion, taking advantage of simple and seemingly natural human tendencies that he believes were created by demons. In this interesting form of storytelling, all intuitive "morality" is reversed, as evil becomes good, good becomes evil, and the development of the patient's virtues is considered fatal. Through such ironic inversion of traditionally accepted and encouraged values, Lewis illustrates the psychology of human beings and their moral choices dictated and manipulated by spiritual beings. All readers of this CS Lewis article have different beliefs and experiences that shape their interpretation of the text. Perspectives and responses are based on the time period, the gender of the reader, whether the reader is Christian, atheist, or another religion, and a general accumulation of beliefs determined by individual experience and upbringing. This idea of ​​unique, infinite perspectives for each text is described by literary analyst and English professor Ross C. Murfin as "reader response" literary criticism, which raises "theoretical questions about whether our responses to a work are the same as its meanings. , whether a work can have as many meanings as we have responses to it, and whether some responses are more valid than others” (Murfin 337). According to reader response critic Wolfgang Iser, readers who actively seek to "introduce 'things' into the text" (Cordell 292) are known as "real readers." In accordance with Iser's reader response theory, there are two different types of readers, the "implied reader, that which the text creates for itself" (Cordell 292) and the "actual reader" (Cordell 292). who applies experience, personal beliefs and prior knowledge to the text, thereby completing the meaning of the work. Somewhere between the “implied reader” and the “actual reader” lies the true intended meaning, as one is inspired by the author and the other by the reader. This research paper will attempt to address the many factors that might influence different interpretations of Lewis's Screw Letters, and how these perspectives reveal the intended meaning. I will compare opposing viewpoints using secondary critiques of the novel, two of the most essential predispositions being whether the reader is a Christian or an atheist. I will also discuss the validity of certain views over others and how this is determined. The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis allows readers to insert their own individual experiences, knowledge, and beliefs into the context of the storyin order to effectively convey the flaws he often sees in Christian lifestyles. The notion of spiritual warfare, or the ongoing struggle of demons to manipulate and conquer individual human devotion, seems utterly absurd to many. From the perspective of a reader influenced by a progressive and increasingly less religious society, this idea seems to be one that only the Christian interpretation of inerrancy, or the belief that everything contained in the Bible is fundamentally and historically accurate. An atheist or non-believer could easily view Lewis's account simply as an accurate description of the human sociological condition, and that the involvement of demons in the midst of a common natural error (or morally neutral action) is completely irrelevant and absurdly false. For this reason, it seems that the effectiveness of this article lies in predisposing the reader to either the Christian faith or atheism. Lewis does not attempt to convince the unbelieving reader of the legitimacy of his claims about the existence of these demons, but rather writes in a way that very convincingly reveals their existence and practices to the already Christian reader. Reading the series of letters without any knowledge or experience as a Christian, there appears to be no support for the claim that these demons dictate the evil that is present in the world. As someone who grew up conditioned to believe in the existence of a God and spirits, a physical manifestation of the struggles common in Christianity, can be logically justified to me. This is due to my heavy reliance on what I have personally felt and experienced in my life thus far, an interesting human tendency given our plethora of proven historical and scientific data that would more logically fuel our decisions and our beliefs. This division – experience versus fact, ethereal versus concrete, real versus subjective – is addressed from the senior Devil to the junior as a construction of the Devil himself: “The general rule which we have now fairly well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better, only the physical facts are "real" while the spiritual elements are "subjective"; in all experiences which may discourage or corrupt them, the spiritual elements are the main reality and to ignore them is to be an escapist. Thus, at birth, blood and pain are "real", joy is only a simple subjective point of view; in death, terror and ugliness reveal what death “really means” (Lewis 77). According to Screwtape, the speaker, I have just demonstrated that I am a victim of his master's creation of the belief in subjectivity within experience. A categorization of everything that happens, everything that physically exists, and everything that is thought into a spectrum of reality dependent on our incredibly limited human perspective is fundamentally absurd; this notion is distorted by our predisposition to recognize tangibles as more "real" than the thought of our own existence and mental abilities, which allows us to ask this question in the first place and should therefore seem the most concrete reality which exists. Lewis claims that this is one of many short-sighted human tendencies that Screwtape tells Wormwood have created demons to drive the patient further and further away from God. Lewis uses the point of view of tempters or demons to address common flaws he sees in a typical quest for faith: "It's funny how mortals always imagine us as putting things into their minds: in reality , our best work is done by keeping things out of the way. »(Luis 18). This passage is a perfect example of what I consider to be the overall purpose of the piece as a whole. Through the ironic perspective of the direct supporters and "creators" of all evil in the world (according to Lewis), he draws attention to harmful Christian practices and habits that he believes must be combatted. In the aforementioned passage, he basically says, “It’s funny (or ignorant) like the others…. . .” fill in the blank. Using the Devil as a lens makes the message even more powerful, because it doesn't come from another human passing judgment, but rather from the source and creator of evil himself. By using Screwtape as narrator, Lewis simply gives more weight and credibility to his authorial voice. While Lewis addresses some habits that Christians often fall into, he also gives more weight and credibility to his authorial voice. Emphasizing that this does not come from our own natural wiring, but rather the work of demons like Screwtape and Wormwood. This may seem, depending on education, simply an excuse that Christians can use for not being good enough. To a non-Christian, this probably seems more like a petty justification for wrongdoing than anything else. Nevertheless, while Lewis uses Screwtape as a creative literary tool to further his argument, he also sincerely believes in the existence of demons, with the novel's New York-based secondary reviewer, Adam Lee, stating: "Although the book may be intended allegorically, on the whole, this leaves no doubt that Lewis sincerely believed that evil spirits existed and were constantly attacking the human mind” (Lee). Regardless of the intended message or the personal beliefs of the author, the work will always be perceived differently by all readers. As a New York writer and secondary reviewer of The Screwtape Letters reminds us: "The novel remains enormously popular because, whether or not you agree with Lewis on the reality of the Devil, the evils promoted by Screwtape – the greed, gluttony, pride, envy and violence – most certainly are” (Cep). Lewis employs a writing style that allows for the insertion of his own experience into the context of what is being discussed. Rather than delving deeply into the life of the "patient", Lewis uses him simply as a representative of the human race to reveal common Christian errors and the Devil's dictation and manipulation of these errors: "When the patient is an adult recently converted to the The enemy's [God's] party, like your man's, is best done by encouraging him to remember, or to think that he remembers, the like nature of 'a parrot of his prayers in his childhood. In reaction against this, he may be persuaded to aim for something entirely spontaneous, internal, informal and unregularized; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguely devotional state of mind in which real concentration of will and intelligence has no part” (Lewis 18). Because the patient is not even given a name and Lewis does not delve into his personal life but instead focuses on the devil's role in it, the reader can easily insert himself into the patient's position and remember times when the same or similar case. happened in his life. Lewis perfectly allows for a deep and unique individual response, as the reader will naturally relate all discussions to their own life and experiences. As Louise Rosenblatt, a pioneer of reader-response criticism, suggests, “readers interact with the text by drawing on their past life experiences to helpinterpret the text” (Cordell 298). This response is also very much influenced by reader emotion as well as experience, with Wolfgang Iser recognizing "the simple fact that readers respond to literature on an emotional level and that such responses are important for the understanding of literature." work” (Cordell 292). When reading the novel, a person's emotional capacity, or the level at which they are naturally emotionally affected, will inevitably influence their interpretation of the text. Likewise, the level at which the reader relates to the methods of temptation employed by the demons will impact the emotional response, and therefore the overall interpretation of the meaning. From a modern and progressive perspective, one would notice certain unequal representations when reading this work. Throughout the novel, sexist undertones can be recognized in Lewis's selection of characters, which simply result in a lack of female characters, particularly as all of the demons mentioned are male. Even excluding women from such a negative role, there is an inherent inequality. However, Lewis also demonstrates considerable awareness of sexual double standards: "It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual 'taste.' This is all false, of course; the figures of popular art are falsely drawn; Real women's bathing suits or tights are actually pinched and supported to make them appear firmer, slimmer and more childish than nature allows an adult woman to be. Yet at the same time, the modern world is taught to believe that it is “frank” and “sane” and that it is returning to nature. As a result, we are increasingly directing the desires of men toward something that does not exist” (Lewis 51). Attributing this unreasonable sexual standard to the work of demons in the early 1940s, whether metaphorically or otherwise, is socially progressive. At the time the novel was written, the existence of God and demons was more widely accepted than in today's culture. A modern reader, with a deeper scientific awareness and conditioned skepticism about religion, may not be as fully immersed in the work as a reader from the 1940s. The novel is about however of a number of ideas and life struggles that have remained relatively unchanged through the ages due to our sociological wiring: "For all readers, whatever their beliefs, the letters present the human experience as a familiar sequence of trials, from the way you take your tea and the parties you attend, the type of person you choose as a partner and the type of politics you espouse” (Cep). Because of the clearly intended audience, the meaning of this work is not as subjective or malleable to reader interpretations as many other novels. Rather, the reader's level of understanding, and therefore interpretation, of the article is largely determined by their prior knowledge and experience with Christianity. Although an infinite amount of interpretations are possible, regardless of context, the most revealing aspects of the novel can only be understood by a Christian reader. However, even though the author may have a clear meaning, reader-response literary criticism suggests that all interpretations are valid, because everyone experiences the text in different ways: "Even if all our evidence in favor of a certain interpretation comes from the work itself, and even if everyone who reads the text interprets it in the same way (unlikely as that, 2000. 291-306.