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Copywork
About This Passage
This paragraph is Lewis's anatomy of a 'false position.' It moves in careful stages: the man delays admitting that his faith clashes with his new friends; the delay leaves him out of step in both directions; he adopts borrowed attitudes first by manner, then by words; and finally the pose becomes the man. Copying it trains a writer to track a moral decline step by step, ending on the law that gives the whole sequence its menace.
I don’t think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgement of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As ...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the argument of Screwtape's tenth letter in sequence, then identify the single human weakness all its tactics exploit. How can you tell that the man's proud self-image, not the worldly friends themselves, is the letter's true target?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape is delighted by friends who are 'superficially intellectual' and 'brightly sceptical about everything,' approached through 'social, sexual, and intellectual vanity.' Is the man endangered more by the friends' ideas or by his own appetite for their approval — and why does Lewis make one of these the primary danger? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- Screwtape values the betrayal carried by 'looks and tones and laughs,' which the man 'does not fully realise' until 'withdrawal' is hard. Is the gravest danger here the betrayal itself or the unconsciousness that lets it set — and why? Use details from the letter to Wormwood to defend your verdict.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Making selfish or manipulative use of a person or situation.
Item 2
Things taken for granted without proof.
Item 3
Irreverent or mocking talk about sacred things.
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Critical Thinking
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