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Dark Night of the Soul Summary

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Dark Night of the Soul Summary
Michael Lanyon
Eric Rupert
Writing 121
14 October 2011

The Dark Night of the soul summary

The following is a summary on the short essay The Dark Night of the Soul by Richard E Miller. This short essay is an essay that has been written with a main point always in mind, that reading and writing has very powerful influences people and their imagination but, the act of reading and writing is not being utilized as much in the modern world. Richard has created an essay that proves his point by taking five very different short stories and giving each a twist that helps the reader see the power of reading. As the reader is chronologically going through the essay he or she is given many possible meanings of the essay. The meaning and the relationships that the stories share are not revealed until the last page of the essay. The essay begins with the story of two distraught high scholars named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.In this story Miller really shows us the power of imagination. The boys felt like they were left behind and couldn’t find a connection in their local high school. This feeling of being lonely drove them to the point of becoming violent. They got back at those people who they felt failed them by stepping into school one morning equipped with automatic guns. The boys went on a rampage. Miller also uses the example of Chris McCandless to further prove his point. McCandless threw away his life and went out on a journey to live by himself in the wilderness because of the stories he read. “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, becomes his survival guide for his trip into the mountains of Alaska. McCandless shows the reader the power that the book had on his imagination. The trip was cut short due to McCandless’ over confidence in Krakauer’s experience in living in Alaska. Stories can control our imagination which can control people’s mind, but writing can help make since of what humans can’t process in the mind. Miller shows us
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