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Copywork
About This Passage
Here Screwtape lays out one of the book's most penetrating ideas about how a whole culture can be misled. A 'fashion in thought' is the danger everyone in an age agrees to worry about. The devils' trick is to aim that shared alarm at exactly the wrong target: 'those vices of which it is least in danger,' so the energy is wasted, while quietly praising 'the virtue nearest to' the vice they actually want to spread — making people approve of the very thing that leads them astray. Lewis's later image fixes it: people 'running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood.' Because the fashionable fear feels like simple common sense, almost no one inside the age notices it is pointed the wrong way. Copying this carefully balanced sentence trains a writer to state a subtle two-part deception with exactness — what is attacked, and what is approved.
The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and f...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Screwtape's twenty-fifth letter to Wormwood in sequence — the wish to replace 'mere Christianity' with 'Christianity And,' the gift of Rhythm joining change and permanence, the twisting of the love of change into a 'demand for absolute novelty,' the use of Fashions to misdirect a generation's alarm, and the elevation of the horror of the Same Old Thing into a historical philosophy. Then state the single corruption you take to organize the letter.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape admits the Enemy made change pleasurable yet 'balanced the love of change' with 'a love of permanence,' uniting them in 'Rhythm.' Is Lewis presenting the appetite for novelty as a good gift that the devils merely distort, or as something inherently risky that needs restraining — and what in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide, and why?
- In his very first letter Screwtape worked to keep the man from asking whether an idea was true, steering him toward what was 'practical' or familiar; here the devils replace 'is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible?' with 'Is this the way that History is going?' Reading the two letters together, is Hell's enduring tactic better described as promoting wrong answers or as substituting the wrong question — and why does the difference matter for clear thinking? 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
Regularly found and deeply rooted in a particular place or group.
Item 2
Aggressively greedy or grasping.
Item 3
Unfaithfulness; the habit of changing and not staying loyal.
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Critical Thinking
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