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Copywork
About This Passage
Here Screwtape compresses the entire opposition between the two sides into three matched, hammering sentences. Each pairs the devils' hunger against the Enemy's generosity — cattle against sons, sucking in against giving out, emptiness against overflow. Copying it trains a writer to build an argument out of parallel structure, where the rhythm itself carries the meaning.
We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, retell Screwtape's eighth letter to Wormwood in sequence. What is the 'law of Undulation,' and how can you tell Screwtape is alarmed rather than pleased by the man's dry period?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape explains the 'law of Undulation': because humans are 'amphibians—half spirit and half animal,' their feelings move in 'troughs and peaks,' so the man's dryness is 'a natural phenomenon,' not Wormwood's 'workmanship.' Why does Lewis ground the spiritual life in this biological rhythm of change, and what comfort might it offer someone in a dull, dry stretch? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to explain.
- Screwtape contrasts the devils' aim — to absorb a soul, 'the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense' — with the Enemy's, who wants 'servants who can finally become sons.' Why does Lewis frame the whole spiritual war as 'We want to suck in, He wants to give out,' and how does that opposition explain the value of the troughs? Use details from the letter to Wormwood to develop your claim.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
A thing made by combining two different kinds.
Item 2
The holding or ownership of something.
Item 3
The state of being a distinct, individual self.
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Critical Thinking
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