Richard E. Miller, the author of The Dark Night of the Soul, is an English professor/executive director of the Plan-genre Writing Center at Rutgers University. He studies the English curriculum in the United States and wonders whether it is successful or a dying art. This is evident in The Dark Night of the Soul. It can be quite shocking to face the possibility that reading, writing, and speaking wield almost none of the powers we regularly attribute to them in our favorite stories. The dark night of the soul for literacy practitioners comes with the realization that training students to read, write, and speak in more critical and self-reflective ways cannot protect them from the violent changes our culture is undergoing. Miller describes throughout the essay his complaints about the loss of importance that our society has attributed to literature. Miller's essay compares many other literary works to prove his point. Compare: the shooting in Columbine, Martin Amis's The Information, Jon Krakauers's Into the Wild, Rene Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy, Mary Karr's Joining the Liars Club, and the experiment in institutional autobiography. In this essay we will define what the dark night of the soul is, what helped me overcome my personal dark night of the soul, and whether the statement “the only way to do it through affirmation is true.” In writing this he addresses every English professors are the dark night of their souls. The dark night of the soul, however, is not just a writer's resentment for a lost art, it is the soul's journey through dark and disturbing questions that drag you into the darkness of your past, your nightmares, your fears, and he's facing you those giants. , killing those dragons. Saint John of the Cross has a book that ...... middle of paper ...... animates and is his way of "travelling it", also informing us (listeners) of what in general is the dark night of 'soul. The essay contains much more information than just what the Dark Night of the Soul is. Comparing the literary works he uses also allows us to see the other author's point of view on the topics. Their perspective is used to prove Miller's point and to demonstrate that reading and writing can impact society but not in the way expected. The way Millers shows it impacts our society is in a negative light. The Dark Night of the Soul is a journey that must be undertaken to find peace. Miller's Dark Night of the Soul explains his complaints about the lost art of literature. We can understand this by knowing what the dark night of the soul is, comparing it with personal experience and discussing the correct way to overcome it..