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Copywork
About This Passage
Screwtape reveals a surprising strategy: the devils want the man to live a long time, because they cannot pull a soul from Heaven all at once and need slow, ordinary years to wear it down. Copying these two sentences shows that the danger is not always sudden — sometimes it is the gradual cooling of a long, dull life.
But, if only he can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally. The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, tell the story of Screwtape's twenty-eighth letter to Wormwood. Why does Screwtape, surprisingly, want the man kept alive? How do the devils hope to use the long middle years? And why does he admit the 'appetite for Heaven' keeps wrecking their plans?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape scolds Wormwood for hoping the man will die in the bombing, because the man is doing so well that 'if he dies now, you lose him.' Is the devils' preference here best explained by a sudden change of heart, or by the fact that they need a person alive in order to wear him down slowly over time — and what in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide, and why?
- In an earlier letter the devils taught people to imagine the Future as 'a promised land which favoured heroes attain'; here they make people believe 'earth can be turned into Heaven at some future date by politics or eugenics or science.' Reading the two letters together, how do these false hopes use a person's real longing for Heaven against him, and why is aiming that longing at an earthly future so effective? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
The state of being successful and well-off, with plenty.
Item 2
Slowly wearing something down little by little.
Item 3
To keep going steadily despite difficulty.
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Critical Thinking
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