The Dark Night Of The Soul By Richard Miller Summary

In Richard Miller’s “The Dark Night of the Soul”, he emphasizes how reading and writing cause influence the mind of people. He begins with recalling the terror that occurred in Columbine High School in the late 1990’s. Miller then tries to uncover the reason why these events in the world had happened within society. He states, “Any major social cataclysm produces in its wake two responses”. First, there is search for the reasons why this happened and then revision of security in order to prevent these destructions in the future. Miller lists further examples of tragedies that occurred on school grounds and poses the question “what legal or educational response could be equal to the challenge of controlling the behavior of so many students from …show more content…
In Pat Schroeder’s opinion the reason kids are becoming murderers is because technology isolates individuals. Miller as well still believes that there should be physical interactions amongst people, however he questions whether reading, writing or group discussions had power over their actions. Miller also uses the example of Chris McCandless. McCandless went out on a journey to live by himself in the wilderness because of previous stories he read. “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, was used a guide to survive throughout his trip in the mountains located in Alaska. McCandless shows the reader the influence that a particular book had on his mind, specifically his imagination. Another example Miller uses is Mary Karr’s “The Liars Club”, which is a memoir of past scenes of violence. By writing out her past memories, Karr was able to use writing as a way to evaluate her psych and as a way of therapy. Miller that poses the question “is it possible to produce writing that generates a greater sense of connection to the world and its inhabitants of self-understanding?” In other words, can writing help understand our inner