Millers “Dark Night of the Soul” starts off with the story of the 1999 Columbine shootings. We enter the imaginative minds of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and we try to understand what really went wrong. Harris and Klebold felt like they were alienated from the rest of their 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 rest is history from that point on. Harris stated something that really made me think as a student. “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”. Being a child of a teacher, that has really been my mind set for years! Education should be the key to stop the insanity, but as I read behind the lines of Millers “Dark Night of the Soul” I notice that I’m wrong. Miller also takes us into another dimension while telling us the story of Tull and Berry. The Prince of Darkness compares and contrasts the lives of two writers Tull and Berry.
Richard Tull is an unsuccessful writer during his career no matter how hard he tries and Gwyn Barry who Miller says is “vapid and soulless” in his writings but becomes a literary success. Tull sets out to destroy Berry’s career, but is unsuccessful in that aspect. What I interpreted from this part of “Dark Night of the Soul” is that reading doesn’t necessarily make you a better person morally. Knowledge in certain types of literature actually gives the mentally disturbed people, even more disturbing ideas. In Miller’s “Following the Word” he writes about Chris McCandless and his journey into the wilderness and the events leading up to his death. Chris McCandless lived and breathed by what he read. McCandless made the decision to leave his previous life all behind him. Mccandless traveled to Mexico, California and ended up in Alaska meeting people along the way. In the end of the story McCandless dies after eating seeds that he did not know were poisonous. Living the life that you read and see isn’t always the best thing.
The Term Paper on How Arthur Miller Controls The Rise And Fall In Act 1 Of The Crucible
The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller, which is based on the true story of the Salem witch trails. Miller wanted theatre to heighten the awareness of what living in our time involves. Therefore, his play has many links with the modern world, McCarthyism for instance. Breaking it down into many smaller scenes, I will analyse Act 1 of The Crucible. I am doing this to explore the dramatic ...
