Screwtape

[T.M. Sommers]

No: HPFGUIDX 77516

I happened to take Screwtape down from the shelf the other day, and 
noticed some interesting correspondences to the Potter books.

First and most trivially, the name of Screwtape's nephew: Wormwood.  I 
am pretty sure, but not absolutely certain, that Wormwood predates 
Tolkien's Wormtongue by a few years.  Not that Wormtail necessarily 
derived from either, but if it did then Wormwood would be the ultimate 
source.

Then, in his second preface (to, I think, the 1961 edition), Lewis 
wrote: "We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually 
concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a 
grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of 
envy, self-importance, and resentment. ... The greatest evil ... is 
conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in 
clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with 
white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not 
need to raise their voice.  Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for 
Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the 
offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

Except for the white collars, this seems to fit Fudge, Umbridge, 
Percy, and the whole ministry perfectly.  Fudge is willing to risk 
letting Voldemort have a free hand, because to acknowledge his return 
would make him look foolish, and might lose him his job.  He certainly 
  envies and resents Dumbledore and his powers and allies.  And, of 
course, self-importance is every politician's major characteristic.

Earlier in the preface, Lewis wrote of the "great harm" done by Goethe 
and Milton in making the devil appear so appealing and even 
sympathetic: "The humourous, civilized, sensible, adaptable 
Mephistopheles" and "the grandeur and high poetry" of Milton's devils 
create the "illusion" that evil is less evil than it really is.  This 
brings to mind, at least to me, the attraction Snape and the Malfoys 
seem to have for a number of readers.  While I don't think either 
Snape or the Malfoys can really compare to the Mephistopheles of 
Goethe (and Boito), and I don't think Rowling intended them to do so, 
it appears that many others disagree.  Rowling seems to have 
unintentionally committed the offense Lewis attributed to Milton and 
Goethe.

Lewis included two epigrams at the beginning of his book.  The first, 
from Luther: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not 
yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot 
bear scorn."  The second, from More, expresses the same idea.  That is 
exactly what Dumbledore did when he kept calling Voldemort 'Tom', and 
exactly what Hogwarts did to Umbridge after she forced Dumbledore out. 
  Not just Fred and George with their mayhem, not just the teachers 
who refused to repair the damage wreaked by F&G, but Hogwarts itself 
"jeer[ed] and flout[ed]" Umbridge by refusing her entry into the 
headmaster's office.

Lastly, Percy's letter to Ron bears a striking resemblance in tone and 
content to Screwtape's letters (at least the earlier ones) to his 
nephew.  Both give "diabolical" advice (as an outraged vicar wrote 
when cancelling his subscription to the periodical in which the 
letters first appeared) in a perfectly reasonable, even superficially 
affectionate, manner.  I would be very much surprised if Rowling did 
not have Screwtape's letters in the back of her mind (or even the 
front) when she wrote Percy's.