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Copywork
About This Passage
These three sentences show Screwtape's whole misdirection in parallel: prayer for a virtue becomes the manufacture of a feeling. The repeated 'When they meant... let them...' structure teaches a young writer how anaphora can stack examples until a pattern becomes unmistakable, and how each clause quietly swaps asking for self-effort.
When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for c...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, tell the story of Screwtape's fourth letter. What are the most important tricks he gives for spoiling the man's prayers, and how do you know they are the ones that matter most?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape's first plan, advised to Wormwood, is to make the man chase a 'vaguely devotional mood' with 'no real concentration of will and intelligence.' Why is a warm religious feeling without real attention exactly what Screwtape wants from the man's prayers? Point to how he describes this kind of prayer.
- Screwtape tells Wormwood to let the man, when he means to pray for forgiveness, 'be trying to feel forgiven' instead. What is wrong with measuring a prayer by the feeling it produces rather than by who you are praying to? Use evidence from Screwtape's letter to defend your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Relating to worship or religious feeling.
Item 2
Relaxed and casual; not following set rules.
Item 3
Made up of several different parts put together.
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Critical Thinking
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