Preview
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the argument of Screwtape's twenty-second letter to Wormwood in sequence — his rage at the man's love and at a household of 'disinterested love' he cannot decode, his sneer that the Enemy is a 'vulgar' 'hedonist' whose austerity is mere 'foam,' his worship of Noise against 'qualms' and 'scruples,' and his collapse into a centipede that his secretary rebrands as 'glorious.' Then state the central claim about good and evil you think the letter advances, and notice how often the devil's own words become evidence against his cause.
Discussion Questions
- Almost everything Screwtape says is meant as an insult — the Enemy is 'vulgar,' the loving home an 'obscenity,' the centipede a 'glorious manifestation' — yet his judgments keep inverting into their opposites. Is the reader meant to take this narrator's descriptions at something like face value, or to read systematically against them, treating his disgust as a reliable pointer to the good? What in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide, and why?
- In an earlier letter Screwtape insisted that no one truly loves without a hidden motive, so the Enemy's love 'must be a disguise'; here the devils are sure the loving family 'must in some way be making capital out of the others' but 'can't find out how.' Reading the two letters together, is the devils' repeated failure better explained as proof that disinterested love is real and invisible to them, or merely as incomplete information about the family? Use details from both letters to Wormwood, and explain why your reading is stronger.
+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 7 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free