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Copywork
About This Passage
Screwtape is annoyed because simple, beautiful things keep undoing all the devils' careful work: a bird's song, music, a wide horizon stir up in people a longing for something more, which Hell can never quite stamp out. Copying this lovely sentence helps a reader notice that same wonder, and to see that the longing it awakens is a gift, not a problem.
Even if we contrive to keep them ignorant of explicit religion, the incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry—the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon—are always...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Tell the story of Screwtape's twenty-eighth letter to Wormwood in your own words. Why does Screwtape say beautiful things keep wrecking the devils' plans? And what surprising thing does he say the devils actually want for the man — to die soon, or to live a long time?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape grumbles that beautiful things — 'the song of a bird,' 'the sight of a horizon,' music and poetry — keep 'blowing our whole structure away.' Why might a sunset, a song, or a wide view fill a person with a longing for something more, even though the devils try to stop it? Which detail in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide?
- Screwtape admits the Enemy made people for 'His own eternal world' and 'guarded them from feeling at home anywhere else.' Does a person's never feeling completely at home in this world mean something has gone wrong, or that people were made for something more — and why? Name the detail in the letter to Wormwood that shows where people are really meant to feel at home.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
A sudden new direction that goes off the planned path.
Item 2
The faraway line where the sky seems to meet the land.
Item 3
The happy, eternal home the Enemy made people for.
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Critical Thinking
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