Dark Night of the Soul - Grade: b PDF

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Response essay on Dark Night of the soul...

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September 20, 2016 ENGLISH 1101 Dark Night of the Soul

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Literature arts are truly important because they stand as the backbone of all other subjects. For one to succeed in all other aspects they need to have some kind of understanding of

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what reading and writing actually is. Richard Miller describes language arts as a form of a guide that can help us lay a foundation for the way we live our lives. In Dark Night of the Soul he narrates different examples of how the interpretation of language art helped others overcome situations in their lives while he also states an example of how an interpretation of someone else led to the sad death of innocent people.

Commented [MB2]: this seems to be the cliam I got from the intro - other stuff didn't connect to this

In Dark Night of the Soul, Richard Miller shines light on how Eric Harris, and Dylan

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Klebod, who were to blame for the Columbine High School shooting, and Chris McCandless did not have a definite line between fiction and reality. Chris McCandless was a man who lived like the books he read. Their definition of reading and writing was one in which they put to action what they had learned or understood. But who or what is to blame? Was it their isolation, was it their parents and family, was it the schools fault, was it the video games they played in Eric and Dylan’s case or was it the authors of the books that McCandless was reading? Throughout the essay Miller walks us through the negative side of reading and how it has affected people. In the last paragraph Miller isn't impressed with how people are taught and questions what and how people are taught at school. He asks "Can secular institutions of higher education be taught to use writing to foster a kind of critical optimism that is able to transform

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idle feelings of hope into viable plans for sustainable action? “At this point it is to an understanding that in a way he is congratulating the two boys from the shooting and McCandless for taking action after interpreting the literature. But is there a deeper meaning?

Even though Miller gives more examples contradicting his thesis than he does supporting it, he gives an example of how Karr got some closure with answers of why her mother was how she was. As Miller explains how by Karr writing she also used it as meditation and realized more of what she knew than what she thought she knew. This is an example of what Miller is suggesting on how reading and writing should be used.

In present day, technology has taken over print media. The introduction of YouTube, Blogs, Instagram, Snapchat has introduced a new way of people documenting their lives and their opinion compared to the older days when people wrote if they wanted to document something. Though books are still available online the internet holds more information. Everything seems to be available online whether true or false and anyone is able to access it.

Technology has advanced with time and individuals can continuously operate devices without having prior knowledge. With technology overtaking reading and writing, more and more people are losing the purpose of education and mainly reading and writing. As scientists

Commented [MB4]: have you defined this yet?

continue to create tools that dumb down the human race, the purpose of not only reading and

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writing but also education will die down.

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Even though technology has become a variable in the reading and writing sector, it should be incorporated with education and reading and reading and writing because together they can be more outstanding than apart. With technology information has become quite accessible to many people. This has helped people have a presumption of how they interpret certain texts compared to others. At the end of the essay Miller says that if the is a possibility that the institutions of higher education use reading and writing to foster critical optism that is able to transform idle feelings of hope into sustainable action. In the essay he gives an example of how Karr, through writing was able to move on in her life .This continues to show of how powerful reading and writing can be. Reading and Writing is an important aspect of our lives and we need to be able to acknowledge its purpose in society. In his essay, Richard Miller asks the why, what and how and literatures involvement. History has shown that the trickle down memory does not work, society should make sure that from a young age, children should be taught the importance of not only reading and writing but also literature in general. I

Marion, There isn’t much here to work with – other than the ‘purpose’ of lit arts. Try working to define that thru Miller. Why do you want to focus on that? And once that is defined, then you can move into how perhaps tech is not meeting or contradicting that purpose. But first set the definitions that matter.

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