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About This Passage
Here Screwtape confesses, in private, the weakness at the heart of his whole scheme. The belief he most wants the man to keep — that 'my time is my own' — is one even the devils 'cannot find a shred of argument' to defend; it survives only by never being examined. Then he gives the reason it is indefensible: a person can neither create a single moment nor hold one back, so his time is plainly given, not owned, and to call it 'mine' is as absurd as claiming the sun and moon for furniture. Copying these two sentences trains a writer to set a bald admission beside the proof that backs it, and to feel how an idea that cannot bear questioning is no idea at all but a spell that works only in the dark.
The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment ...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Screwtape's twenty-first letter to Wormwood in sequence — the plan to grow the man's peevishness by darkening his intellect, the engine of grievance behind anger, the guarded assumption that 'My time is my own,' the admission that time is 'pure gift,' the twisting of the word 'my,' and the closing claim that no human can truly say 'Mine' of anything. Then state the central argument: that a false sense of ownership is the root of both a bad temper and a refusal to receive life as a gift.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape argues that men are 'not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury,' and that 'the more claims on life' a person makes, 'the more often he will feel injured.' Why does an inflated sense of being owed turn ordinary interruptions into felt injuries, and how does Screwtape's plan reveal that a quick temper grows directly out of pride? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- In an earlier letter Screwtape preferred to keep the man from reasoning at all, fighting truth with distraction rather than honest argument; here he insists the belief about owning time be kept in 'darkness,' since 'there aren't any' arguments in its defence and his task is 'purely negative.' How do these two letters together show that the devils deliberately avoid honest thought, and why does an idea that must be hidden from examination thereby confess its own falseness? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
A fretful, irritable temper; crossness over small things.
Item 2
Lawful and rightful; properly owed or allowed.
Item 3
A belief taken for granted as true without proof or examination.
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Critical Thinking
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