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Copywork
About This Passage
This paragraph holds one of Lewis's deepest paradoxes about the self. The devils and the Enemy both want to 'detach men from themselves,' but in opposite directions: the devils erase the distinct person, while the Enemy strips away only 'the clamour of self-will' and hands the personality back, 'more themselves than ever.' Copying it trains a writer to hold a paradox steady — that a man becomes most himself precisely by surrendering — and to mark the crucial distinction on which the whole meaning turns.
Of course I know that the Enemy also wants to detach men from themselves, but in a different way. Remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness ...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the argument of Screwtape's thirteenth letter in sequence, then identify the single conviction about reality and the self toward which it builds. How can you tell that the man's contact with the real, not merely his good mood, is what alarms Screwtape?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape calls the man's recovery 'a second conversion—and probably on a deeper level than the first,' a 'defeat of the first order.' Is the repentance dangerous to the devils chiefly because it reverses his direction or because it goes 'deeper than the first' — and why does Lewis stress one of these? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- Screwtape explains that Pains and Pleasures are 'unmistakably real' and so give 'a touchstone of reality,' which is why a real pleasure 'kills by contrast all the trumpery' of the World. Why does Lewis make direct contact with the real, rather than argument, the thing that exposes the World's counterfeits? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Impossible to reach or approach.
Item 2
Sunk beneath the surface; wholly buried in something.
Item 3
With great, painstaking effort.
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Critical Thinking
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