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Copywork
About This Passage
This is the philosophical heart of the letter, and copying it slowly is the best way to feel how exact Lewis's distinction is. He claims that every heart carries two pictures of love, and that the difference between them is not of degree but of kind — the desire 'differs qualitatively according to its object.' One love is 'amenable to the Enemy,' 'mixed with charity,' lit by 'reverence,' a going-out toward another's good. The other wants the beloved 'brutally,' as 'a slave, an idol, or an accomplice' — a closing-in upon a person as a thing to use. Copying this trains a writer to hold a precise moral distinction in a single, balanced sentence, and to see that the same word, love, can name two opposite movements of the heart.
You will find, if you look carefully into any human’s heart, that he is haunted by at least two imaginary women—a terrestrial and an infernal Venus, and that his desire differs qualitatively according...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Screwtape's twentieth letter to Wormwood in sequence — the failure of the direct attack, the engineered fashion and fake images, and the two kinds of love he finds in every heart. Then name the central claim: that Hell labours to convert love from a reverent honoring of a real person into a possessive craving fixed on unreality.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape says the deep masters 'produce in every age a general misdirection' of taste and direct desire to 'something which does not exist.' What makes a manufactured, transitory standard so powerful over people, and why does aiming a person's longing at the unreal slowly disable him from loving a real person? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- Screwtape contrasts a love 'mixed with charity' and 'reverence,' ready for faithful marriage, with a desire that treats a person as 'a slave, an idol, or an accomplice.' What is the essential difference between honoring the one you love and using them, and why does Lewis present the reverent love as the real thing and the possessive one as a counterfeit? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to develop your claim.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
In terms of kind or essential nature, rather than amount.
Item 2
The quality of being unforced, genuine, and in harmony with what is real.
Item 3
Intensely felt and refined; here, a suffering perfected in its cruelty.
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Critical Thinking
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