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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the argument of Screwtape's twenty-fourth letter to Wormwood in sequence — the clinical diagnosis of the girl's 'unobtrusive little vice,' the plan to make the dazzled novice imitate and exaggerate it into Spiritual Pride, the charity and love genuinely lifting him beyond his level, the silent redefinition of 'we Christians' as 'my set,' and the insistence that he never examine his self-congratulation. Then state the single corruption you take to organize the letter, and weigh why Lewis treats spiritual pride as the subtlest and gravest of the vices.
Discussion Questions
- Lewis attributes the girl's certainty largely to 'the mere colour she has taken from her surroundings,' comparing it to a child sure only her family's fish-knives are 'real.' Is Lewis arguing that a conviction absorbed from one's milieu is thereby discredited, or only that its social origin is no evidence of its truth and breeds a complacency easily turned to pride — and what in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide, and why?
- In an earlier letter Screwtape protected an indefensible belief by keeping it 'silent, uninspected, and operative,' since examination would destroy it; here 'success depends on confusing him,' keeping 'a sly self-congratulation' alive while forbidding the question 'What, precisely, am I congratulating myself about?' Reading the two letters together, is the devils' characteristic method better described as instilling particular errors or as suppressing self-examination itself — and why does the difference shape how a person ought to guard against pride? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood, and explain why your reading is stronger.
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