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Copywork
About This Passage
These two sentences quietly expose the gap between how the young man sees himself and how things really stand. He imagines he is fitting in by his own quality; in fact two invisible kindnesses are at work. First, his many faults 'forgiven' and 'made the best of' because the others are 'charitable' and have taken him in 'as one of the family.' Second, much of what he says — his 'conversation' and 'opinions' — is not original at all but 'mere echoes of their own,' which they graciously let pass as if it were his. He has 'no notion' and 'does not dream' of either. Copying these balanced sentences trains a writer to lay two parallel facts side by side, and to feel how a person can stand entirely on borrowed kindness while believing he stands on his own merit — the exact blindness on which spiritual pride feeds.
He has no notion how much in him is forgiven because they are charitable and made the best of because he is now one of the family. He does not dream how much of his conversation, how many of his opini...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Screwtape's twenty-fourth letter to Wormwood in sequence — the girl's 'unobtrusive little vice' of assuming outsiders are stupid, the plan to make the dazzled novice copy and exaggerate it into Spiritual Pride, the charity and love that are really lifting him, the confusion of 'we Christians' with 'my set,' and the demand that he never examine his self-congratulation. Then state the single corruption you take to organize the letter.
Discussion Questions
- Lewis traces the girl's smugness largely to 'the mere colour she has taken from her surroundings,' comparing it to a child certain that only her family's fish-knives are 'real.' Is Lewis suggesting that a confident sense of being right is worthless because it often comes from one's upbringing, or only that such confidence is no proof of being right and can curdle into pride — and what in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide, and why?
- In an earlier letter Screwtape kept an indefensible belief 'silent, uninspected, and operative' because it could not survive examination; here he insists on keeping 'a sly self-congratulation' going while never letting the man ask 'What, precisely, am I congratulating myself about?' Reading the two letters together, is the devils' method better described as planting particular false beliefs or as preventing examination itself — and why does the difference change how a person guards against pride? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood, and explain why your reading is stronger.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Not noticeable; not drawing attention to itself.
Item 2
Something taken for granted as true without proof.
Item 3
Agreement or harmony between things; a good fit.
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Critical Thinking
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