Anything that is good or positive in human life, is noxious, disgusting, or insufferable for devils. The noxious fog also represents what might be called, within The Screwtape Letters, the inverse rule of Hell.
They can guide humans into sin, they can encourage certain emotions, but God, because he is all-powerful, can stop them from influencing human lives at any time. In addition to God’s grace, the noxious fog represents the limited influence devils have over human lives. God’s healing gracea kind of spiritual energy that, according to Christian teaching, fills humans during moments of divine inspiration or during religious sacraments is a sign of God’s love, which devils are unable to tolerate. The Patient is protected by during his second conversion experience, which occurs while he is walking to an old mill. The noxious fog represents God’s divine grace.
The noxious fog is only visible to spirits, not to humans, and it is only “noxious” (suffocating and very unpleasant) to devils. This version of Screwtape may, in fact, be just as much his true self as his more humanoid, though never actually visually described, shape.
Or, indeed, it can be seen according to Screwtape’s account, as a sign of his innate virility. It can be seen as an irresistible change caused by his growing anger at Wormwood. This, says Screwtape, is how the poet John Milton described such occurrences in Hell. It can be seen as a curse, a punishment given him by God. His transformation can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The centipede is a symbol of Screwtape’s contradictory nature. But, as usual, the reader should not take Screwtape’s message at face value. Screwtape explains becoming a centipede as an external sign of his inner “Life Force,” a positive sign. The Giant Centipedeĭuring the course of writing the twenty-second letter, Screwtape transforms into a giant centipede. Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
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