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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the argument of 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 self-defeating 'demand for absolute novelty,' the use of Fashions to misdirect a generation's moral alarm, and the elevation of the horror of the Same Old Thing into a historicist philosophy. Then state the single corruption you take to organize the letter, and weigh how one manufactured craving scales from a private vice into a means of steering whole cultures.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape grounds his case in a claim about human nature: 'the humans live in time, and experience reality successively,' so they need change, which the Enemy made pleasant but balanced with 'a love of permanence' in 'Rhythm.' Is Lewis presenting the appetite for novelty as a good intrinsic to creatures who live in time and merely distorted by the devils, or as a liability of finitude that requires disciplining — and what in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide, and why?
- In an earlier letter Screwtape's aim was to get a man to 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason'; here the devils get people to ask 'Is this the way that History is going?' instead of 'is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible?' Reading the two letters together, is Hell's recurring method better described as supplying false beliefs or as substituting an irrelevant ground — fashion, futurity — for the relevant criteria of truth and goodness, and why does the distinction matter for how thought is corrupted? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood, and explain why your reading is stronger.
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Critical Thinking
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