Point of View

The point of view is the first person and Screwtape, a devil, is the narrator. Screwtape speaks in the form of letters to his young nephew (and at the end in the form of a speech accompanying a toast). Everything in the book is told from his perspective on things. Everything is interpreted through his rather twisted point of view. Screwtape is a limited and unreliable narrator. Often, the reader has to infer the opposite of what Screwtape has said in order to understand what is being described.

An example of this is the girl the patient falls in love with. Screwtape spews out venom and hatred for her. From this, we can infer she is a wonderful and lovely person, a sincere Christian of gossamer but steel-like strength. According to Screwtape, she is "a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss...