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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the argument of Screwtape's twenty-first letter to Wormwood in sequence — the resolve to darken the intellect before the moral assault, the analysis of anger as 'misfortune conceived as injury,' the guarded and indefensible assumption that 'My time is my own,' the admission that time is 'pure gift,' the corruption of the possessive pronoun, the denial that a man owns even his own body, and the closing thesis about 'Mine.' Then state the letter's central claim about human nature: that a false sense of ownership is the hidden root of both a quick temper and a refusal to receive one's life as a gift.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape insists that 'the way must be prepared for your moral assault by darkening his intellect,' and then offers an analysis of anger: men are enraged not by 'mere misfortune' but by 'misfortune conceived as injury,' which depends on a denied 'legitimate claim.' Why does Screwtape attack the intellect before the temper, and how does his own analysis expose a quick temper as the offspring of pride rather than of circumstance? 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 confusion rather than honest argument; here he keeps the assumption about owning time 'uninspected' because, he admits, 'there aren't any' arguments in its defence, so his task is 'purely negative.' How do these two letters together reveal a deliberate policy of preventing thought, and why does a belief that can remain 'operative' only while unexamined thereby confess its own falsehood? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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