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Copywork
About This Passage
These two sentences reveal the devils' whole method in a single move. They do not invent the love of change any more than they invent hunger; both are good and natural, made by the Enemy. What the devils do is 'pick out and exaggerate' a healthy pleasure until it becomes a vice — stretching the enjoyment of food into gluttony, and the gentle 'pleasantness of change' into a frantic 'demand for absolute novelty' that nothing can satisfy. Screwtape's confession is the key line: 'This demand is entirely our workmanship.' The restless craving to have everything newer, fresher, more up-to-date is not natural at all; it has been manufactured. Copying these sentences trains a writer to set a familiar example (gluttony) beside a new claim (the novelty-craving) so that one illuminates the other.
Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is en...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, tell the story of Screwtape's twenty-fifth letter to Wormwood. What good gift did the Enemy give by joining change and permanence in 'Rhythm'? How do the devils twist the love of change into a 'demand for absolute novelty,' and how do they use 'Fashions' to make people guard the wrong danger?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape explains that the Enemy balanced the love of change with a love of permanence, joining them in 'Rhythm' — the seasons 'each season different yet every year the same,' a fast that 'changes to a feast' but 'is the same feast as before.' Why is a world of pure sameness or pure newness worse than one that has both woven together, and what does this 'Rhythm' give people that neither alone could? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- In an earlier letter Screwtape sneered that the Enemy is 'a hedonist at heart' who 'has filled His world full of pleasures'; here he admits the Enemy, 'being a hedonist at heart,' made change pleasurable 'just as He has made eating pleasurable,' and that the devils only 'twist' it. How do these two letters together show that the devils invent no pleasures of their own but only spoil good ones, and why does that make every temptation a counterfeit? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
The quality of being new and not seen before.
Item 2
The state of lasting and staying the same over time.
Item 3
The habit of eating or wanting far too much.
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Critical Thinking
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