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Copywork
About This Passage
This is the moral heart of the letter, and copying it slowly is the best way to feel the difference Lewis is drawing. He says every heart carries two pictures of love. One is 'amenable to the Enemy' — 'mixed with charity,' ready for faithful marriage, lit by 'reverence,' a love that honors the other person. The other wants the beloved 'brutally,' as 'a slave, an idol, or an accomplice' — not a person to cherish but a thing to use. Copying this trains a writer to hold two opposite states of the heart in one sentence, and to see that the same word, love, can name either the honoring of a person or the using of one.
There is one type for which his desire is such as to be naturally amenable to the Enemy—readily mixed with charity, readily obedient to marriage, coloured all through with that golden light of reveren...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, reconstruct Screwtape's twentieth letter to Wormwood in sequence — the failure of the direct attack, the manufactured fashion and fake images, and the two kinds of love he describes in every heart. Then name the central claim: that Hell works to turn love away from reverent honoring of a real person toward unreality and possession.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape says the deep masters 'produce in every age a general misdirection' of taste through 'popular artists' and advertisers, and direct desire to 'something which does not exist.' What makes a manufactured, fake standard so powerful over people, and why does aiming a person at the unreal slowly unfit him to love a real person? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- In an earlier letter the devils tried to replace a man's 'own real likings' with 'the standards of the World, or convention, or fashion'; here Screwtape shows how the fashions are made and how desire is steered. How do these two letters together reveal that controlling what people want is a steady aim of Hell, and why is an honest, first-hand love such a danger to it? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
A deliberate steering of people or attention the wrong way.
Item 2
Lasting only a short time; quickly fading.
Item 3
Open and willing; able to be led or brought into harmony with something.
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Critical Thinking
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