by Amber Kramer Summary Essay: The Dark Night of the Soul Richard E. Miller essay “The Dark Night of the Soul” to be an interesting way to think about reading and writing in today’s world. Richard uses the violence in the world to question if our educational system is relevant to keeping us safe and whether the power literature can be used to change the tragic event that happen around us every day. Richard begins with a few horrific events such as Columbine high school massacre. He makes us start to think about the motives behind the events. By talking about the possibility that the technological advances could be isolate us into our fantasies. He suggests that reading, writing and, discussing
The following section Richard miller uses Mary Karr’s book “Joining The Liars’ Club: Writing and The Generation Of Hope” as an example of three things; the epidemic of people that need event and or themselves to be remembered, it shows the need for understanding the motivations of the past events, and the power of reading and writing has to heal a person from their past. This book finally shows a more positive view on the use of the powers of reading and writing.

By the end of this essay its clear to me that it’s about several different things; The need to be remembered, The power of reading and writing has on a person, the relevance of proper literature to the real world, and if there is reasons or a way to find a motives for peoples action. The Columbine boys wanted to be remembered for their actions so the used the power of reading to soot their needs. There was no lack of reading and writing in there world, but still at the end of this essay Richard E. Miller states a disagreement with this. Richard says “ there will be no more great books” He says this because he feels the world is done with the power of literature, whether it has the power to express idol emotion, free you from your reality, give you understanding, make you remembered or not. In Richard world its become a fact that people just are not choosing to use these powers anymore