Exceptions, good error tracebacks, interactive tinkering, introspection - these are some ingredients which get you going fast, and keep you running ever after. If you need to drop down to the bare metal, to obtain more performance, or to connect to services which are only available in C, for example - then you can. For some, that is an absolute necessity, for many others it almost never happens. Scripting is not a horizontal extension to C, which is almost always used as implementation language for the script compiler or interpreter. While the script implementation is C, and deals with pointers, memory allocation, and error conditions - it does this so you never have to again.
Strings just work.
Stray pointers can no longer mess up what you have coded. And scripting goes further. The fundamental technique of using a language to build the perfect environment in which to write an application can be repeated. Scripting languages illustrate how far one can go in defining general-purpose languages. Scripting can be used to define more powerful tools for domains such as software development, networking, but also banking, accounting, telephony, collaboration, and a host of other industry-specific areas.