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Copywork
About This Passage
Having shown how delicacy traps the old woman, Screwtape turns to the male version, and the mechanism is worth copying because it traces a whole moral descent in three short sentences. The bait is not appetite but pride: a man is flattered into 'thinking himself very knowing about food,' encouraged to 'pique himself' on his discoveries. Then comes the quiet hinge — 'what begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit' — by which an attitude struck for admiration hardens into a need he no longer chooses. Copying this shows a writer how a temptation is built in stages, each one preparing the next.
Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the tow...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Screwtape's seventeenth letter to Wormwood in sequence — his defense of gluttony, the kind he prizes, the old woman who embodies it, the male version, and his deepest aim. Then name the central claim: that gluttony's danger is not quantity but a self-will that masquerades as restraint and quietly governs the larger virtues.
Discussion Questions
- Lewis could have simply condemned greed. Instead he has Screwtape prize 'gluttony of Delicacy' — fussiness — above 'gluttony of Excess.' What makes fussiness easy to excuse as harmless or even refined, and why does Screwtape value it more highly than plain overeating? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- The old woman is certain she 'is practising temperance' at the very moment she indulges her appetite. What allows a person to honestly mistake a vice for the opposite virtue, and why does that disguise make the fault nearly impossible to repent of? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Devotion to the pleasures of the body and the senses.
Item 2
A slow, secret entry that corrupts from within.
Item 3
A settled lack of generous love toward others, shown when appetite makes a person harder to live with.
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Critical Thinking
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