Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
Here Screwtape names the thing the devils most fear about real joy and real pain: they cannot be faked. Because pleasures and pains are 'unmistakably real,' they hand a person a 'touchstone' — a test-stone — for telling the true from the false. Copying this sentence shows a writer how a single precise image, the touchstone, can carry a whole idea about how we recognise what is real.
The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality.
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, tell the story of Screwtape's thirteenth letter to Wormwood. Why is he so angry, and what does he say real pleasures did to all his careful work?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape is furious that the man's 'repentance and renewal' amounts to 'a second conversion—and probably on a deeper level than the first.' Why does Screwtape treat the man's recovery as 'a defeat of the first order' rather than a small setback? Point to how Screwtape's letter to Wormwood describes the man's change.
- Screwtape says 'real positive Pleasures' are 'unmistakably real' and so give a person 'a touchstone of reality.' Why does a true, simple joy give a person a way to tell the real from the fake? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to explain.
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Savage and cruel; brutal.
Item 2
Given to dreamy, exaggerated feeling rather than fact.
Item 3
A clever scheme or trick to deceive an enemy.
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 5 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free