The Dark Night Of The Soul Summary

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It was hard for me to understand Miller’s purpose behind The Dark Night of the Soul. Miller starts the essay narrating the terrible events at Columbine High school where two distraught high scholars named Eric Harries and Dylan Klebold carry out a number of really shocking murders. Miller puts forwards some reasons to explain the cause of these murders such as inattentive parents, indifferent guidance counselors, insensitive jocks, the media, the internet…He then looks at reading and writing to affirm that they aren’t going to stop the violence of the world. They aren’t either going to change students’ behavior. “ It’s reassuring to think that either the work of the legal system or the educational system can reduce or eliminate altogether the threat of the unpredictable and the unforeseen. This is why we have childproof medicine …show more content…

Is there any way to justify or explain a life spent working with and teaching others to work with texts? Why bother with reading and writing when the world is so obviously going to hell? This made me think as Miller as doubtful about the power of reading and writing. However, as I kept reading the following sections, I realized that what the author tries to do is to share with the reader his concern about how people see reading and writing in our days. Miller wants to transmit to us that reading and writing have very powerful influences in people and their imagination, but he believes the power of reading and writing is not being utilized as much in the modern world. Through the examples he presents in the Dark Night of the Soul he tries to show different perspectives of reading and writing so that the reader realizes that both are really powerful realities which can have a big influence in someone’s

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