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Copywork
About This Passage
Here Screwtape names one of Hell's strangest goals: to drown the whole universe in Noise. He has just confessed that the devils 'detest' both music and silence, and now he explains why they fight them — they mean to 'shout down' every melody and every quiet, until there is nowhere left for a person to hear anything good or think a clear thought. Notice that the devils' plan is not to argue people out of goodness but simply to make it impossible to hear: constant noise leaves no room for the still, small call of conscience. Copying these three sentences helps a reader see that quiet is not empty or boring but precious, and that choosing silence and real music is a small act of resistance against a very loud darkness.
We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, tell the story of Screwtape's twenty-second letter to Wormwood. Why is he so furious about the man's new love and the girl's home? What does he admit about the Enemy's world of pleasures, and why do the devils 'detest' music and silence and worship Noise?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape sneers that the Enemy is 'a hedonist at heart' who 'has filled His world full of pleasures,' so that the devils must 'twist' every good thing 'before it's any use' to them. The devils can never create a pleasure but can only spoil one the Enemy already made. Why must every temptation therefore offer a stolen, twisted good rather than anything new, and what does Screwtape accidentally reveal about which side the good things of the world belong to? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- In an earlier letter Screwtape insisted that no one can really love selflessly and that the Enemy's love 'must be a disguise for something else'; here the devils are sure the loving family 'must' be 'making capital out of the others,' yet they 'can't find out how.' How do these two letters together show that the devils literally cannot understand disinterested love, and why does a household that simply loves each other terrify them? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Complete quiet; the absence of sound.
Item 2
Loud, harsh, or unwanted sound.
Item 3
A feeling of happy enjoyment or delight.
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Critical Thinking
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