Not only does Screwtape use tactics against the voice of reason, but he also corrupts pleasures through the same three spheres of world, flesh, and spirituality. If Wormwood does not follow through with the plan Screwtape created for him, then things in the Patient’s life like love and grace will ruin their foundation. Screwtape gives the formula for corrupting the worldly and fleshly pleasures to Wormwood so that he can succeed. “An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula” (44). Earlier in letter nine, Screwtape enlightens Wormwood to the fact that he and other demons cannot create pleasure, they can only corrupt the divine pleasures given to humans by God. In other words, the world has pleasures in it that can be twisted and ultimately become desired by the flesh. “I have always found that the trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations” (Screwtape 43). The goal is to divide the Patient from God and to crave things beyond what God calls acceptable through the world and the flesh. The result is, that because God is not apart of the pleasure, then there cannot be any glory given to God, making it unacceptable in the eyes of God. Intensifying the want for it and numbing the glory towards God, extinguishes the spiritual nature of the Patient. Larry Harwood goes into grave detail as well on how Screwtape perverts love, the ultimate pleasure, to eliminate God from the Patient’s life:…show more content… “The world of God is permeated with love, while the abyss of Screwtape is a vacuum totally devoid of love, though extinction of the desire for love is not automatic, even in hell: Wormwood the apprentice still feels the need, whereas Screwtape the veteran teacher has weaned himself of any optimism Screwtape has for his own ultimate victory over the Enemy is that humans will find themselves on a path in life that will choke out the grace of God.” (Harwood
