Screwtape offers a short lesson on Time and Eternity
The Screwtape Letters – C. S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters (1942) is a novel defending Christianity against objections. Lewis wrote it from the point of view of the Devil. It is a series of letter from a senior Demon (Screwtape) to his nephew Wormwood, a junior Tempter. Screwtape holds a bureaucratic admin post in Hell and through the thirty-one letters imparts advice to the inexperienced and incompetent Wormwood on various methods to undermine faith and induce humans into engaging in sin. Demons cannot comprehend God’s love for man.
If I was to say that I have a favourite set of books it has got to be The Chronicles of Narnia (1951-56) but it was a long time after first reading them that I was introduced to the concept of them as representing religion.
Lewis explained in 1954 to some Maryland fifth graders, "I did not say to myself 'Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia'; I said, 'Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.”
Lewis rationalises the books thus:
The Magician's Nephew - the Creation and how evil entered Narnia
The Lion etc. - the Crucifixion and Resurrection
Prince Caspian - restoration of the true religion after a corruption
The Horse and His Boy - the calling and conversion of the heathen
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - the spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep)
The Silver Chair - the continuing war against the powers of darkness
The Last Battle - the end of the world and the last judgement
Therefore, it follows that maybe, The White Witch represents the Devil, Peter is the valiant and wise Christian, Reepicheep is the very soul of chivalry with both its virtues and its failings, Edmund is like Judas, a traitor and a sneak but repents and is forgiven and that Father Christmas (giving gifts to fight the powers of darkness) symbolises of Holy Spirit.
However, reading them as a child I was simply captivated by the magic and happy to get lost in the adventures caring nothing for any underlying meaning. Reading them again as an adult … I still don’t care.