"Dark Night of the Soul" Structure

 From Ways of Reading:

"The Dark Night of the Soul" is the first chapter in Richard MIller's book Writing at the End of the World. The chapter...is organized by subheadings. You might think of these as a way ofpunctuating the essay, and you might think of this technique as a tool for your own toolkit.

As you reread the essay, pay attention to each unit marked off by a subheading, and pay attention to the progression or arrangement of these units. How might they mark stages or strategies for the writer? for the reader? (Are they big paragraphs, for example, or mini-essays, or stanzas, or something else?) How might you describe the principle of selection and organization? Can you imagine bringing this strategy into your own writing?" (444)

Think about how the concept of "punctuating" a piece of writing (as Bartholomae & Petrosky use the term) applies to digital writing. For example: how is a website (for example our course website or this Google Group) punctuated? What is the logic behind punctuating a piece of digital writing? 

Richard Miller utilizes subheadings in his work, The Dark Night of the Soul, to establish a separation of ideas. Similar to an outline, the subheadings provide a clear marking for the start of a new stage in the essay. Following each subheading includes lies short thoughts by characters in the books that he goes on to dissect. Miller presents glances at different authors’ works, relating back to the central theme of the human experience in a sense.
Analysis of the featured works, supplemented by Miller’s own commentary, Miller writes of life, death, and the interactions in between as well as the worth of it all. The subheadings provide organization and a stream of thought for the writer as well as the reader. Since each work that Miller analyzes remains very different and brings up such a broad range of ideas and concepts, a fluid transition seems difficult. The subheadings allow a transition that does not have to connect these ideas to each other; they just leave each area to be connected to the work as a whole. The last subheading introduces the explanation of the organization of Miller’s writing. He attempts to answer the readers’ questions of the connection of it all and open up for the rest of the memoir.

For the sole use of organization I find the subheadings a refreshing, easy mix up to the rather mundane transitional phrases. I thought the initial disconnect between the works brought together to show what is life of both the character and author of these works and finally the life of the actual author Miller was kind of like piecing together a mystery

Subheadings, bullet points, tabs, etc. are used in the digital medium to additionally provide organization. It allows an easiness for reading because it enables the reader to find what he/she is looking for without having to read through the whole site, so to speak. These sorts of “punctuation” are also commonly found in textbooks where such a broad amount of information is able to be skimmed over easily to access a narrower spectrum.