60 pages • 2 hours read
C. S. LewisA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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.
By C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet
C. S. Lewis
Perelandra
C. S. Lewis
Prince Caspian
C. S. Lewis
Surprised by Joy
C. S. Lewis
That Hideous Strength
C. S. Lewis
The Abolition of Man
C. S. Lewis
The Discarded Image
C. S. Lewis
The Four Loves
C. S. Lewis
The Great Divorce
C. S. Lewis
The Horse And His Boy
C. S. Lewis
The Last Battle
C. S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C. S. Lewis
The Magician's Nephew
C. S. Lewis
The Pilgrim's Regress
C. S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain
C. S. Lewis
The Silver Chair
C. S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
C. S. Lewis
Till We Have Faces
C. S. Lewis