Letter 31 Summary

This is the very last letter. Screwtape begins it cooingly. Wormwood has apparently been begging him for tokens of affection, wanting to know (now that all is lost) whether his uncle ever really loved him. Smoothly, nastily, in a snakelike way, Screwtape assures him that their mutual desire for one another has always been the same. He gloats he is the stronger of the two in the world of Hell, where the strong prey upon the weak.

The man was killed in an air raid. Screwtape describes "the scream of bombs, the fall of houses, the stink and taste of high explosives on the lips and in the lungs, the feet burning with weariness, the heart cold with horror, the brain reeling..." (p. 172). Yet the next moment, the man was taken from this world into the next. The man recognized Wormwood's dealings with...