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About This Passage
This paragraph is Screwtape's anatomy of faction. He shows how any small group breeds an inward 'hothouse mutual admiration' and an outward 'pride and hatred' excused 'without shame' because a 'Cause' sponsors it — and then drives the knife home by insisting that even a group founded for the Enemy's own purposes is not immune. Copying it trains a writer to follow a single social mechanism from cause to effect and then to its most uncomfortable application.
Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride an...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the argument of Screwtape's seventh letter in sequence, then name the single aim toward which both halves drive. How can you tell that the substitution of the World for faith, not the policy of concealment, is the letter's true climax?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape explains that the devils now prefer 'to conceal' themselves and hope to 'mythologise' science until a disguised 'belief in us' creeps in, producing the 'Materialist Magician.' Why does Lewis suggest that an age worshipping impersonal 'Forces' is more useful to the devils than an age of open superstition, and what does that reveal about the modern temptation? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- Screwtape holds that 'all extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged,' since the present age is 'unbalanced and prone to faction.' Why does Lewis treat partisan extremism as a spiritual condition rather than a merely political one, and how does a 'Cause' convert private pride into something felt 'without shame'? Point to the words that show the conversion.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
The use of fear and violence to coerce or control.
Item 2
Truly; in actual fact rather than merely in appearance.
Item 3
An overheated, closed setting that forces rapid, unnatural growth.
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Critical Thinking
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