In the poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," the speaker thinks that youth is better than old age. What is his reasoning? What age do you...

The speaker believes that youth is preferable to age for a number of reasons:

1. Life is short, and we have the most capacity to experience its joys when we are young.  "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, / Old Time is still a-flying" (1-2).  We have limited time and need to make the most of it when we're able.

2. Once we begin to approach middle age, time seems to go more quickly.  In Herrick's metaphor, the higher the sun gets, the "nearer he's to setting" (8).

3. He says that "blood is warmer" in our youth (10).  In other words, we are more passionate when we are young.  This is a good thing.

4. Once we lose our beauty, "we may forever tarry" (i.e. no one will want us), and beauty is associated with youth as well.  

The speaker seems to think of a relatively youthful age as one's prime, perhaps the early 20s.  However, many would agree that there is more to one's prime than simply beauty and passion; I suppose it all depends on how one defines the best part of one's life.  This age would be one's prime.

In what ways is Buddy's cousin like a child in A Christmas Memory?

Buddy, the story's narrator (modeled upon Truman Capote himself, since this is a memoir of his own childhood), describes his cousin vividly and says she is "still a child." His physical descriptions of her combine features of someone who is both very old and very young. Her outfit is mismatched and careless, as a child might wear without an adult guiding their choices: tennis shoes, an old sweater, a "summery calico dress." She is "small and sprightly" and has "white shorn hair" and a "craggy" face "not unlike Lincoln's," but her face also looks "delicate" and "finely boned," and her eyes are "timid." 

The two of them share a special bond, like childhood friends. Buddy describes their relationship to the other relatives in the house by making the two of them seem like children who must live reluctantly with adults: "though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend."

When the two of them must go and buy ingredients using the Fruitcake Fund, they are excited like small children: "Silently, wallowing in the pleasures of conspiracy, we take the bead purse from its secret place and spill its contents on the scrap quilt."

Throughout the story, the friendship of Buddy and his cousin is described in ways to emphasize his view of her as his best childhood friend, and their closeness was clearly due in part to her own childlike nature.

Why can't the Tucks stay in any one place for very long?

"But they can't stay on in any one place for long, you know. None of us can. People get to wondering." She sighed. "We been in this house about as long as we dare, going on twenty years."

The above quote comes from chapter ten of Tuck Everlasting. Mae Tuck is explaining to Winnie how the family has been operating for just about the last century. They get together at their current home every ten years in order to spend time together as a full family. The Tucks' "current home" must change with regularity, though. Mae says that they never stay in one place for more than twenty years. The Tuck family can't stay longer than that because people would begin to get suspicious about the neighbor family that doesn't appear to age—at all. The Tucks tell Winnie what happened the last time they were in the same area for nearly twenty years: The residents began thinking the Tuck family were witches and devil worshipers.

"I was married. I had two children. But, from the look of me, I was still twenty-two. My wife, she finally made up her mind I'd sold my soul to the Devil. She left me. She went away and she took the children with her."

"I'm glad I never got married," Jesse put in.

"It was the same with our friends," said Mae. "They come to pull back from us. There was talk about witchcraft. Black magic. Well, you can't hardly blame them, but finally we had to leave the farm.

The Tucks can't stay in any one place for very long because they are concerned about their own safety and well-being and don't want to frighten other people.

In "Once Upon a Time," why does Gordimer mention her house's location above a mine here?

The fact that Gordimer's house is located above a mine reinforces the irony portrayed in the story. The tale deals with the irrational fears white people have had of other racial groups during, specifically, South Africa's apartheid era, when people were segregated on the basis of colour. Whites were the most privileged class and lived in wealth and security. Laws were promulgated to ensure that they occupied the best areas and that they were protected from crime.

Furthermore, the pass laws and other similar enactments ensured that the movement of black people was restricted and controlled. The Job Reservation Act also ensured that whites were guaranteed the best employment opportunities whilst the majority of other races were forced into semi-skilled and unskilled labor.

This system guaranteed wealth to the whites and perpetuated poverty among other groups. Workers were exploited and their labor ensured that the whites enjoyed lives of privilege. The wealth and privilege that whites therefore enjoyed was built on the back of especially black labor that was exploited and underpaid, ensuring greater profits and, as a result, greater wealth. The symbolism of the house, in this sense, should thus be obvious. It is a dwelling occupied by a privileged person whilst the mine is an apt symbol for black labor.

Gordimer was a white person who was granted the privileges extended to people of her race. As an activist, she fought against the injustices suffered by the disenfranchised in South Africa. 

As already suggested, the mine in Gordimer's story is a symbol for black labor and the wealth it brought. The migrant labor system ensured a constant stream of black mine workers who were forced by the disadvantageous conditions in the rural areas to leave and work in the mines. They believed that they would then create better lives for themselves and their families. Miners, especially, were underpaid, overworked and lived in atrocious conditions in the mine hostels.

Crime was rife in the hostels and other locations where the miners lived, and there were many faction and gang fights in which many died. Residents were exposed to extremely dangerous conditions in the gold and other mines. Many lost their lives. Therein lies even greater irony—the fear and paranoia should have been reversed. The migrants had much more reason to fear those they served than vice versa.

The irony Gordimer deliberately exposes in the symbolic location of the house is that, as a representative of the privileged class, she is paranoid about her safety and suspects an intruder when, in fact, she should be grateful for the sacrifices made so that she can live where she does.

In addition, the family who is the subject of the story should have felt the same gratitude. Both, however, felt threatened by those who created, and then ensured, their lives of privilege. So, instead of welcoming and being thankful to the ones who brought them such advantage, they turn against them and try to shut them out. The family soon suffer the terrible consequences of their paranoia, unlike the author, who discovers that the ominous sounds she hears are harmless movements in the house caused by shifting.

It is, therefore, both ironic and sad that the same mental shift was never made by the family and they became victims of their own irrational apprehension.

How is Iago presented in Shakespeare's Othello?

Iago is in many ways a metaphor for the Christian concept of the devil. He does not commit crimes himself. He tempts others, abuses their moral weaknesses, and persuades them indirectly to commit horrible crimes. While he claims to do this out of fear that Othello has slept with his wife, he presents very little evidence of this; it seems more likely that Iago enjoys hurting others for its own sake. This makes his character even more sinister, since he stands to gain very little from his horrible actions.

The name Iago itself means the planter. This is fitting, as he plants negative notions in the minds of others and allows them to take a tragic course. He does this by playing on Cassio's weakness for wine and on Othello's leanings towards jealousy. This method of indirect temptation for no reason other than a love of causing harm is the very essence of evil.

Why doesn't Scrooge like Christmas in A Christmas Carol?

Scrooge does not like Christmas because he has many negative memories associated with it.

When Scrooge is talking to Fred and the men collecting for charity, he tells them all kinds of reasons why he hates Christmas.  It costs him money because his employees get a day off.  “Idle” people expect to be taken care of.  Christmas is expensive.  Scrooge scolds Fred on celebrating Christmas.

Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? (Stave One)

These all seem like good reasons to hate Christmas for a man like him.  They are logical and support everything we know about Scrooge.  However, when the ghosts visit, we start to see the real reason Scrooge hates Christmas.  He has had to deal with many negative memories on and near the day.

First of all, we learn that Scrooge was left alone at school during Christmas as a child.  After his mother died, it was only his father and sister.  His father just left him at his boarding school instead of bringing him home for the holidays like all of the other kids.  As a result, Scrooge alone spent the holidays miserably wishing he had company other than books.  Something like that would definitely make a person hate Christmas.

It gets worse though.  After a relatively happy period where his father brought him home and apprenticed him to the cheerful Mr. Fezziwig, Scrooge received another blow right at Christmastime.  His fiancé Belle dumped him.

“You may—the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will— have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!” (Stave One)

She dumped him at Christmastime, and ever since he has been alone.  That is another reason to hate Christmas.  Scrooge may have been more focused on money than her, but you can tell from his reaction to seeing Belle dumping him that she really hurt him.

It does not end there.  The last terrible thing that happens to Scrooge on Christmas Eve is his partner and only friend Jacob Marley dying.  Although we know from the vision of Belle that Scrooge did not even sit with his friend as he was dying, we can tell from his reaction to seeing and talking to Jacob’s ghost that he really cared about his partner.  Jacob was pretty much all he had.  Jacob dying on Christmas Eve was just another in a long line of terrible things that happened to Scrooge at Christmas time.

Yes, there are plenty of unemotional reasons why Scrooge hates Christmas.  It costs money to celebrate it and no one is working.  However, the truth behind Scrooge’s dislike of the holiday comes from all of the tragedy he suffered during the season.  It takes the intervention of the ghosts to show him that he is actually not alone.  Even though his beloved sister died, she lives in his nephew.  He can become a part of Bob Cratchit’s family, as he was a part of Fezziwig’s.  The holiday that was so terrible for him in the past can become a part of his future.

What are the consequences of injustice which are inherent in the society in "Master Harold". . . and the boys?

"Master Harold". . .and the boys suggests that the consequences of injustice in South African society are the loss of dignity and humanity. In the play, Hally recounts his best memory: the flying of the handmade kite with Sam. Hally was only a young boy at the time they flew the kite, so he only remembers the wonderful moments of that day—the freedom and awe that he felt seeing that makeshift kite fly. But in the present time of the play (1950), Sam fills in the details that Hally doesn't remember: Sam could not stay in the park and fly the kite with Hally because there was a "Whites Only" bench there. Sam and Hally have a father-son type relationship, and once Hally recognizes that his race gives him privilege in their society, he is torn on whether or not to exert his privilege. He wants Sam to call him Master Harold like Willie does, but Sam warns him that once he crosses that line, their relationship will never be the same. When Sam drops his pants and Hally spits on him, the play reveals the humiliating and devastating nature of segregation under apartheid—a system that hurts black and white South Africans alike. Under such a system, the consequences are loss of dignity and humanity.

3.46 moles of C3H8 are burned in a room with excess oxygen gas. How many moles of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere during this...

The balanced chemical reaction for this reaction is given as:

`C_3H_8 + 5O_2 -> 3CO_2 + 4H_2O`

When propane (C3H8) is burned in the presence of excess oxygen, carbon dioxide and water are generated. Using stoichiometry, 1 mole of butane reacts with 5 moles of oxygen and generates 3 moles of carbon dioxide and 4 moles of water.

In the given case, 3.46 moles of butane undergo combustion. Since, 1 mole butane generates 3 moles of carbon dioxide, 3.46 moles will generate 10.38 moles (= 3 x 3.46) of carbon dioxide. 

Since, the molecular mass of carbon dioxide is 44 gm/mole (= 12 + 2 x 16), the amount of carbon dioxide generated is 456.72 gm (= 10.38 moles x 44 gm/mole).

We can also calculate the amount of water generated in this reaction. 3.46 moles of butane, on combustion, generates 13.84 moles of water. 

Hope this helps.

Who is Chauvelin in The Scarlet Pimpernel?

Citizen Chauvelin is the villain of Baroness Emmuska Orczy's play and novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel. He is the enemy of Sir Percy Blakeney and the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. He is a member of the National Assembly as well as the Committee for Public Safety, and as a fierce patriot, he wants to punish the Scarlet Pimpernel for helping members of the ancien regime nobility escape the fallout of the French Revolution. Chauvelin comes to suspect Blakeney's involvement with the League and blackmails his wife, Marguerite, after finding that her brother had close ties to the Pimpernel. Though she tries to protect her brother and husband from Chauvelin, she mistakenly leads him to finding out that Blakeney is, in fact, the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin chases Blakeney to Calais, where he intends to capture him, but the man escapes to safety in England.

What do Triphen and Mistress Cutler think of Lyddie when she arrives in Lyddie?

Lyddie does not look like she belongs in the tavern because she is scrawny and ragged.

Lyddie is impressed by the elegant ladies and gentleman on the stagecoach as she arrives at the tavern.  Her own appearance is quite a contrast.  Mistress Cutler notices.

She came over to the wall and whispered hoarsely across it to her. "What are you doing here?" She was looking Lyddie up and down as she asked, as though Lyddie were a stray dog who had wandered too close to her house. (Ch. 3)

Lyddie looks very ragged, and Mistress Cutler tells her “this is a respectable tavern, not the township poor farm.”  Lyddie is embarrassed and introduces herself, saying she has a letter from her mother.  This finally convinces the tavern mistress that she does belong.  After that, she sends Lyddie into the kitchen and pretty much ignores her.

Triphena comments on Lyddie’s looks too.

 "Lucky you're so plain.  Guests couldn't leave the last girl be." She was ladling stew into a large serving basin. "Won't have no trouble with you, will we?" (Ch. 3)

At first, Lyddie just feels in the way in the tavern’s big kitchen.  However, Triphena takes a shine to Lyddie and shows her the ropes.  They actually become friends, despite Lyddie’s first impression.  Lyddie is determined to prove herself worthy, considering herself a “fierce worker.”  She wants to make them realize that she has value.

When Mistress Cutler gives Lyddie a storebought calico and boots, she feels even less comfortable than in her “rough brown homespun,” again considering the mistress ashamed of her.

Things do not really get better with Mistress Cutler, and her rough personality is a contrast to Triphena’s friendliness and help.  Lyddie finds herself growing more independent, and the tavern allows her to see interesting people like the factory girls.  Eventually she quits due to Mistress Cutler’s intractability, but she finds a job at the factory satisfying.

What does the sniper do to trick his enemy in the short story, "The Sniper"?

The sniper was on a rooftop.  He lit up a cigarette, and the glow of the cigarette gave away his position.  A bullet hit the wall of the roof near where he was sitting.  An enemy soldier was aiming at him from across the street. He tried to locate the enemy’s position but could see nothing.

Just then, an armored enemy car drove down the street and met an old woman, who pointed out the sniper’s position.  He fired and killed the machine gunner in the car, and then fired again and killed the woman.  In order to do that, he had to give away his position, and the enemy on the roof across the street fired again, wounding  the sniper in his arm.  His forearm was dead to any feeling.  He couldn’t lift his rifle any longer. 

The sniper knew that he needed to kill the enemy, or he would never get off the roof.  But first he had to locate him.  He took off his cap, placed it on the muzzle of the rifle, and lifted the rifle until the cap was over the parapet of the roof.  Immediately a bullet pierced the cap.  The enemy, thinking the sniper was dead, stood up.  When he did that, the sniper was able to shoot him using his revolver. The dying man fell forward, fell off the roof, and hit the ground, dead.  Later the sniper would discover that the enemy was his own brother.

If specific heat of a is infinite, then heat is given out or taken in or there is no change in temperature whether heat is given or taken ... or...

Specific heat of a substance is defined as the amount of heat required to increase the temperature of a unit mass (of this substance) by 1 degree Celsius. Correspondingly, it would be the amount of heat released when the temperature of a unit mass of a substance drops by 1 degree Celsius. 

If the specific heat of a substance is infinite, then, an infinite amount of heat is required to increase the temperature of a unit mass by 1 degree Celsius. In other words, we can supply all the heat, we want to, to this substance and its temperature will not change (that is, increase). Thus, the statement that "the temperature will not change whether the heat is given or taken" is accurate. There is no evidence that such a material will produce or consume heat, although if that is happening,we will be able to detect any temperature change in this substance. 

Hope this helps.

Where are Tom and Daisy at the end of the story?

At the end of Chapter 7, Nick observes Daisy and Tom after the accident that killed Myrtle:

They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale — and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.

Nick already knows that Gatsby has lost the fight for Daisy, and she and Tom will stay together.  After Gatsby's death at the hand of Wilson, Nick calls to Tom and Daisy's house to tell them about Gatsby, but they have already left, taking baggage with them and leaving no forwarding address.  Nick later runs into Tom on Fifth Avenue in New York City, presumably where Tom and Daisy ran the day of Gatsby death.  Nick's comment about them sums it up:

they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . .

It does not really matter where they ended up; they will always create messes where they live (think of Tom and all of his illicit affairs) and move on, leaving chaos in their wake.

What are the similarities and differences between evolutionary psychology and cultural ecology?

Evolutionary psychologists and cultural ecologists are both interested in answering the question "Why do we do what we do?" Both cultural ecology and evolutionary psychology are schools of thought in the social sciences that assert that human behaviors are the result of natural selection. Where these two studies differ is in their content and approach to "what we do." Evolutionary psychology is a branch of psychological studies that is interested in how people's thoughts, feelings, and actions may be the result of deeper cognitive processes which conferred an evolutionary advantage. This is a very broad-scope field of study because evolutionary psychologists are interested in working out these evolutionary drives common to all people. Cultural ecology, on the other hand, is a specialization of anthropology. With that, cultural ecologists are much more interested in material culture, language, and social exchanges than thoughts, feelings, or brain chemistry. A cultural ecologist might compare and contrast two "responses" to environmental pressures from different parts of the world, while the evolutionary psychologist would be more interested in what changes occurred in the brain as a result of that environmental pressure. Both fields of study approach the human condition in its many shapes and forms as the result of millions of years of environmental change and responsive evolution.

How did things change as a result of the Once-ler's activities?

The Once-ler is a main character in The Lorax, written by the popular children's author Dr. Seuss. The story of The Lorax is heavily environmentalist and warns against the dangers of corporations which exploit natural resources to satisfy their own greed. In the story, the Once-ler comes to a beautiful place with abundant wildlife and the fictional Truffula Trees. He cuts down the Truffula Trees and uses their colorful, fluffy tops to make the mysterious, does-it-all commodity called a thneed. The Once-ler is successful in selling his thneeds, but this leads to him cutting down all of the Truffula Trees, depriving many of the animals of their source of food and shelter. All of the animals leave because they now have no food or shelter and their surroundings become dirty. The Once-ler's thneed industry depletes the natural resources of the area and disrupts the life-cycles which once thrived there.

Eventually, the Once-ler feels guilty for his depletion of the environment and lives as a hermit, shut up in his home in the now wasted lands. The Once-ler's industry and exploitation of nature resulted in the near total destruction of his surroundings, but towards the end of the story we see him taking responsibility for this and trying to make amends. He entrusts the very last Truffula seed to an unnamed character (who we met in the beginning of the book) and encourages him to plant it and care for the tree.

Is The Iliad an epic?

Homer's The Iliad is one of the most famous examples of Classic Greek poetry. 

Epic poetry is characterized by lengthy narrative and themes of heroism or a journey. Many other genres have been influenced by and developed from epic poetry- the epic novel, film, or television program similarly draw from tales of long, heroic journeys.

The Iliad is set during the Trojan War and describes the final weeks of the war and the events surrounding characters like Achilles, Agamemnon, Patroclus, and Odysseus. In a companion piece to The Iliad, called The Odyssey, Odysseus must make the long journey home from war. This, too, is an example of epic poetry. The Iliad is characteristic of epic poetry first because it is quite long, and also because it tells of tremendous battles on Earth (between humans) and how the Gods (on Olympus) interfere. This transcendence of mundane events, where supernatural and earthly beings interact, is quite common in epic poetry.

Why carbon dioxide is a gas at room temperature in terms of bonding and structure?

Carbon dioxide is made of one carbon atom that is sandwhiched in between two oxygen atoms. The carbon atom is in between each of the two oxygen atoms and there is a double bond between each carbon-oxygen bond (O=C=O). Thus, carbon dioxide is symmetrical. Oxygen is more electronegative than carbon. Therefore, the oxygens pull the electrons towards themselves with the same force on either side of the carbon atom. The symmetry of carbon dioxide and equal pulling of oxygen on either side of the carbon results in little to no intermolecular existing within carbon dioxide other than London (dispersion) forces and Van Der Waals. These are very weak intermolecular forces that are overcome at room temperature. Thus, carbon dioxide molecules are able to move freely as a gas.

Why does Atticus defend Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird? (I know he is the only one who is capable for giving a fair shot at a trial for Tom...

Since Atticus Finch has always held to liberal principles, he feels that he must defend Tom Robinson as a matter of upholding his personal as well as his professional beliefs. In other words, he must "practice what he preaches."

It is, indeed, a matter of personal integrity for Atticus to act as the defender for Tom Robinson in his unjust trial for rape. As Atticus explains to his brother Jack in Chapter 9, he feels that he must take on the task in the hope that by doing so, he can at least prevent his children from "catching Maycomb's usual disease." And, as the only lawyer in town who will truly try to uphold the "justice for all" under which legal trials should be conducted, Atticus feels it is his professional obligation to accept the position as defender.

Further, in Chapter 11, Atticus tries to prepare Scout for "worse things" than the insults of Mrs. Dubose as the trial for Tom nears. He hopes that she and Jem make look back on his defense of Tom

"...with some compassion and feeling that I didn't let you down. This case, Tom Robinson's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man's conscience--Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man."

With these words to his daughter, Atticus expresses his personal obligation as a Christian to defend Tom Robinson as well as to affirm his personal and professional ethics.

In Julius Caesar, compare the actions of Antony to those of Cassius and Brutus. What do they reveal about his character?

When we meet Antony for the first time, we discover, significantly, that he is with Caesar and is about ready to start his run on the course during the Lupercalian Festival, which is a traditional celebration of purification and fertility. The fact that he is so close to Caesar indicates the depth of the relationship between the two and his participation in running the course informs us that he has a vivacious spirit and is athletic. This much is alluded to by Brutus in his conversation with Cassius:

I do lack some part
Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.

Brutus is in a glum mood and appears unfriendly, a fact which Cassius quickly latches on to. Cassius discovers that Brutus is displeased with himself and is fighting an internal battle. Brutus also makes him aware later that he is concerned about Caesar becoming ruler of Rome. He states that he would sacrifice his life for the honour of Rome as can be gauged from his response to Cassius' query about whether he would not have Caesar crowned emperor:

I would not, Cassius; yet I love him well.
But wherefore do you hold me here so long?
What is it that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honour in one eye and death i' the other,
And I will look on both indifferently,
or let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honour more than I fear death.

Cassius comes across as someone not to be trusted, as Caesar himself observes in speaking to Antony:

...Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. 

Caesar's mistrust is not unfounded, for Cassius is the chief conspirator in the plot to assassinate him. Cassius is manipulative and will use any means to gain support for his malicious scheme. He does so with Brutus, for example, who he at first flatters and then tells about Caesar's weakness and how they are more than his equals and should not allow him to subjugate them.

Cassius is driven by ambition and personal gain, whilst Brutus' displays an honourable desire to save Rome from perdition - he wishes to act for the general good. Antony, on the other hand, shows an absolute love and loyalty to Caesar. Since both Cassius and Brutus are aware of his allegiance to the general, they do not approach him for support in their pernicious plot. Brutus describes him as 'a limb of Caesar.'

It is also clear that Brutus believes that Antony is not politically ambitious for he tells Cassius, after the same's suggestion that they murder him too:

And for Mark Antony, think not of him;
For he can do no more than Caesar's arm
When Caesar's head is off.

When Cassius mentions that he fears Antony because he bears an 'ingrafted love' for Caesar, Brutus replies:

Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him:
If he love Caesar, all that he can do
Is to himself, take thought and die for Caesar:
And that were much he should; for he is given
To sports, to wildness and much company.

It is clear that Brutus sees Antony as harmless and weak, one who would be unable to function without his leader, a person who is more interested in socialising and having fun. It is only later that he realises that he completely misjudged Antony.

This poor judgement is most pertinently displayed once the conspirators have assassinated Caesar in the senate house. Antony flees but returns later and utters a passionate speech over the brutally slain body. He asks the conspirators why they believed Caesar was dangerous and Brutus answers:

Or else were this a savage spectacle:
Our reasons are so full of good regard
That were you, Antony, the son of Caesar,
You should be satisfied.

Antony accepts what Brutus tells him and then requests that he be allowed to carry Caesar's corpse to the marketplace and there address the crowd. The naive Brutus accedes but Cassius is upset about him allowing Antony this honour. 

After Brutus has spoken and given reasons for Caesar's murder, he asks the crowd, who has accepted his explanation, to not leave and listen to Antony speak. It is in his brilliant oration that Antony's true nature is displayed. He manipulates the crowd, who have been in support of the conspirators after Brutus' speech, to such an extent that they become restless and unruly.

Antony stays the citizens several times and works them into a frenzy until they become like caged animals, hungry for blood. Once Antony realises that they have become unstoppable, he lets them go. The vindictive crowd surges through the streets of Rome, seeking the conspirators who have, by this time, left in a hurry.

The wily Antony has achieved his purpose and comments:

Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot,
Take thou what course thou wilt!

He has purposefully driven the crowd to mutiny and in so doing, has achieved part of his vengeance. With the conspirators driven out of Rome, he can, with his forces and Octavius' support, attack and finally destroy his enemies who would be vulnerable out in the open.   

Clearly, Antony is a man of integrity and honour, one who truly acted in the best interests of not only his beloved Rome but also in the interests of his Caesar, unlike Cassius, who was malicious and self-centred and Brutus, who was somewhat misguided and naive. 

How can I find the elements of music in the song/score "Time" from the movie Inception by Hans Zimmer? What are the dynamics, form, harmony,...

Sounds like a fun assignment! It’s a powerful piece of music. Here are some questions you might consider asking yourself about the piece in each of the categories you mentioned that will help you on your way.

Dynamics—How does the overall volume of the piece shift and change throughout? How do the volume of the instrument parts change in relation to each other?

Melody—What would you describe as the main melodic theme of the piece? Can you hum it to yourself? Is it broad, spanning many notes, or narrow, spanning few? Is it consistent or repetitive? How does it change throughout the piece?

Form—Look for major sections of the piece, and attempt to describe the organizational structure. For example, I might call 0:00-0:30 ‘introduction of theme.’ Why might I name that section as a distinct entity? What could you call other sections?

Harmony—What is the chordal structure of the piece? How do the different instrument lines interact with each other?

Rhythm—What is the time signature of the piece? The tempo? Are there any rhythmic themes inside the melody?

Timbre—What instrument are used, and why? How does the choice relate to the message and feeling of the music?

Texture—What is the overall range of notes from low to high? How many parts are played at any give time? How does the composer use texture to build tension through the piece?

Overall—Why did the composer make the choices he made? And what does it have to do with Time?

In The Leap, why has the narrator returned to her childhood home?

The narrator of "The Leap" by Louise Erdrich states two reasons for returning home, one slightly more explicitly than another.

The narrator's mother, Anna, had been a trapeze artist who was injured in a freak accident that also killed her first husband. Lightning struck the circus tent during the finale of a trapeze act in which she was performing. At the hospital where she recuperated from her injuries, she met her second husband, the narrator's father, who was a doctor. He taught her how to read, as she had previously been illiterate. She fell in love with reading. When her eyes began to fail her due to cataracts, her husband read to her, but then her husband died.

The narrator returns home to keep her mother company after her father's death and to read to her, as you can see from the following lines: 

Since my father's recent death, there is no one to read to her, which is why I returned, in fact, from my failed life where the land is flat. I came home to read to my mother...

The mention of a "failed life" away from home suggests a second motive for returning home, that the narrator had been doing badly when living independently. 

How does Jonas change his feelings for Fiona in The Giver?

Jonas liked Fiona as a friend, but he came to have stronger feelings for her.

In Jonas’s community, no one has strong emotions.  Jonas is friends with Fiona because she is his age and she is nice to him.  One day he volunteers with her at the House of Old.  That night he dreamed about Fiona, and his parents explained it was his first Stirring.

Finally she sat down beside him at the table. "Jonas," she said with a smile, "the feeling you described as the wanting? It was your first Stirrings. Father and I have been expecting it to happen to you. It happens to everyone." (Ch. 5)

Stirrings are sexual feelings that come with the onset of puberty.  The community wants to limit its citizens’ experiences and feelings.  This is one of the reasons for Stirrings pills.  The other reason is that they do not want any unexpected babies if people act on these feelings.

Jonas’s feelings for Fiona are more complex.  When he learns that release means death by lethal injection, he also learns that Fiona has been trained in release.

"And what about Fiona? She loves the Old! She's in training to care for them. Does she know yet? What will she do when she finds out? How will she feel?" Jonas brushed wetness from his face with the back of one hand. (Ch. 20)

The Giver explains to Jonas that Fiona has not been trained to feel.  There is no such thing as feelings for Fiona.  She is just like everyone else in the community in that she thinks nothing of releasing the elderly.  She has no concept of death.

For Jonas, learning that Fiona participates in release is just another betrayal.  He is horrified by his community's actions, but knowing that Fiona takes part in the procedure is even worse.  He always considered her a good person and a friend.  He realizes that both his father and Fiona are not who he thought they were.

How is ambiguity in nature a metaphor for ambiguity in human experience in "Birches"?

In "Birches" by Robert Frost, the central ambiguity is not in nature itself but in human understanding of nature. In a sense, the poem seems informed by  Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed by Bishop Joseph Butler, a work that has informed much mainline anglophone Protestant thinking about how we understand the world. Butler argues that just as we see ambiguities and things we cannot explain in nature, so too religious truths can often seem ambiguous and mysterious. This is due not to religion or science being false, but to the necessary incompleteness of inductive knowledge.

The first ambiguity Frost addresses is the cause of the bent birches. He knows by induction that boys can bend birches by swinging on them and first uses this information to extrapolate that the bent birches he sees were bent by repeated use by a boy. Next, he realizes that in fact boys' swinging would not cause birches to stay bent. He notes:

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them ...

In these lines, he presents an understanding of how we think about causation. We tend to personify causes and think about humans (and human intention and design) as explaining natural phenomena, whether literally or by analogy, but this is actually an artifact of our own desire for explanation in our own terms. What makes nature ambiguous is that it does not function in human terms and thus we cannot fully understand it. Instead nature exists at the intersection of Heaven (a mysterious divine will) and earth (the nature we perceive around us) and acts as an intermediary between the divine and human, something symbolized by the birch tree which lets the poet (metaphorically) repeatedly reach up to heaven and return to earth in the lines:

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

Why is the society of Fahrenheit 451 realistic?

There are numerous aspects of the futuristic dystopian society depicted in the novel Fahrenheit 451 that are similar to present-day American society. Bradbury exaggerates common features of American culture throughout the novel which make Fahrenheit 451 seem eerily realistic. Mildred's parlor televisions are exaggerations on the ever increasing size and realistic quality of modern TVs. One could easily see TVs becoming interactive in the future with the way technology has been growing exponentially. Bradbury depicts cars traveling at high speeds throughout the novel, which is already commonplace in today's society. There are roads in Texas where the speed limit is actually 85 mph! Mildred is constantly depicted as being in a trance listening to endless music and commercials via her Seashell earpiece. Wireless headphones are already in production and are continually decreasing in size each year. Mildred is addicted to sleeping pills and even overdoses on them throughout the novel. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, over 4% of adults said they were prescribed sleeping pills. This means that nearly 9 million Americans take medication to sleep.

In the dystopian society, citizens are obsessed with violence, sports, and action. Sports have always been popular throughout America. One of the most violent and popular games in American is football. Over 111.9 million Americans watched the 2016 Super Bowl. The rise of mixed martial arts organizations like UFC and Bellator MMA also depict America's obsession with violence. Gun violence is prevalent throughout American society, and tragic mass shootings seem to happen yearly.

Throughout the novel, Montag's society is involved in several wars and the citizens seem indifferent toward the prevalent violence taking place overseas. Similarly, America has been involved in several wars in the Middle East for decades. There seems to be continual fighting, and American troops have been sent overseas on numerous occasions from Desert Storm to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bradbury also comments on the commercialization of religion, censorship laws, and the broken political system throughout the novel. These aspects of the dystopian society are commonplace in America today, which makes the novel Fahrenheit 451 seem like a revelation.

Who is Teofilo in “The Man to Send Rain Clouds”? A. a Roman Catholic missionary B. Louise's son C. an old Pueblo Indian who has died before...

The correct answer to this question is (C) an old Pueblo Indian who has died before the story opens.

The story opens on Ken and Leon, Teofilo’s grandsons, discovering the old man’s body under a cottonwood tree near the sheep camp, where he had been tending the flock.  “He had been dead for a day or more,” we learn. This points to (C) as the correct answer. He is not (A), a Roman Catholic missionary, though there is a priest in the story. He is not (B) Louise’s son, because in Part Three of the story Louise says she has been thinking “about the priest sprinkling holy water for Grandpa.” Louise is actually Teofilo’s granddaughter. And we can discard (D) the leader of the Pueblo community, because there is no evidence anywhere in the story to support this claim. Indeed, one could imagine that if Teofilo had been the leader of the community, he would not have been tending sheep, and his funeral would attract much more attention than it does.

What is the painful secret that Sal and Phoebe share in Walk Two Moons?

Both Sal and Phoebe have experienced the pain of having their mothers leave home. Sal’s mother, who loved her family but had to get away, left home to go to Idaho. Her reason was that she needed to leave after a particularly painful tragedy that all the family experienced. She has gone to see a cousin, someone who knew her when she was a child, before she was a wife and mother. She has not ceased to love Sal and her husband, but feels she has to discover, or perhaps rediscover, who she is, since her world has been completely upset.

Phoebe’s mother left without giving a reason. She left vague messages in notes to Phoebe, Phoebe’s sister Prudence, and Mr. Winterbottom. She also fixed several meals and put them in the freezer. Despite the obvious fact that Mrs. Winterbottom planned to leave of her own free will, Phoebe thinks that her mother has been kidnapped. She investigates the “mystery,” finding several clues that support her conclusion.

Both Sal and Phoebe have difficult times coping with the loss of their mothers. Sal begins to make sense of her situation as she helps Phoebe get through her own problem. Both girls learn to see that they themselves were not the reasons for their mothers’ departures, in spite of their own self-absorption. They begin to see their mothers as people in their own rights, as human beings, not just their parents. By this understanding, both girls learn to let go of the previous images they had of their mothers, and in doing so gain a measure of freedom and independence.

What are three pros and cons about whether it is appropriate for the government to withhold information from its citizens?

The degree to which governments should share information with their citizens is a hotly debated topic. While the specific arguments for and against sharing information with citizens will vary based on individual cases, here are some general pros and cons you could use to answer this question.

Pros

1. Withholding information from citizens can help maintain order during a crisis. If the government does not reveal how serious a crisis is, people will be more likely to behave normally.


2. Withholding information from citizens can protect national security. The less the government tells its people, the less information potential terrorists can use against that country.


3. Withholding information from citizens protects government employees. Concealing information from citizens can protect employees (for example, police officers) from being targeted by anti-government organizations.

Cons

1. Withholding information from citizens prevents people from acting in their own self-interest. If a crisis happens and the government keeps it a secret, the people affected by that crisis will not be able to protect themselves.


2. Withholding information from citizens encourages corruption. If government employees know that the general public will not be able to hold them accountable for their actions, they will be more likely to behave in an unethical manner.


3. Withholding information from citizens causes them to distrust the government. If a government regularly hides information from its citizens, they will be less likely to believe what the government does tell them.

From the poem, "Dulce Et Decorum Est," by Wilfred Owen, please explain what happened to the soldier who could not put on his gas mask in time.

The speaker says that in an "ecstasy of fumbling," the soldiers race to put on their gas masks (9-10).  World War I was the first war in which mustard gas was used as a weapon.  If a man inhaled this gas, his lungs would fill with blood and he would die, essentially by drowning in this fluid. 

The man who didn't get his "clumsy helmet" on in time inhaled mustard gas, and the speaker (with his gas mask on) watches him flail and contort as though he were being burned "like a man in fire" (12).  The helpless narrator sees this doomed man through the mist of the gas, and describes him as "drowning," because this is basically the kind of death the gas causes (14). 

The other soldiers "flung" his body into a wagon, and he must have remained alive, suffering, for a while because his eyes were "writhing in his face" and bubbles ran out of his mouth as a result of his "froth-corrupted lungs" (19, 22). It took some time for him to die, and it would have been an extremely painful, awful death.  Now, the speaker says, he sees this man in his dreams, choking and dying all over again. He says that if we, too, could see this man who died after inhaling mustard gas, we would never again say that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.

What is a significant scene in "A Christmas Memory" that depicts the main purpose?

This short memoir contains a number of significant scenes that help to illuminate its purpose, which is capturing the essence of what Christmas was like for the author as a young boy. This story discusses a particular Christmas season, beginning in late November and ending on Christmas Day, and also hints at events that took place weeks, months and years later: in describing the Christmas memories the author is painting a picture of his childhood and honoring his elderly cousin who was an important fixture in his upbringing. One purpose of the story is to demonstrate Buddy's point of view and perspective on life as it must have been influenced by his cousin and friend.

Several scenes stand out as important here: certainly the events surrounding the baking of the fruitcakes is significant, and they span a number of days. These activities including gathering pecans, then going to buy other ingredients with what little money they have (the Fruitcake Fund), buying whiskey at a special secret place, and then four whole days of baking. Buddy describes these activities in a way that shows he looks forward to them every year, and they seem to define the holiday season.

The scene where Buddy and his cousin go out on Christmas Day to fly the kites they made and gifted to one another is also important, perhaps even the most important scene in the story. In this scene, Buddy's cousin admits she has changed her mind about God and religion, and realizes that she does not have to wait until death to see God, and that she sees Him all around her in everyday pleasures and pastimes. Buddy also states that this was their last Christmas together, and that admission gives the entire story context, in terms of his relationship with his friend defining his childhood and creating his most potent memories.

Describe the 1911 Chinese revolution.

The 1911 revolution in China was an important one. It changed China’s system of government. As a result of this revolution, the Republic of China was created, as the Qing Dynasty was no longer in power in China. The imperial system had ended.

The Qing Dynasty faced many issues. In 1895, China lost a war with Japan. As a result, China lost some territory including control over Korea and Taiwan. In 1899, China was in danger of being colonized as many nations had developed spheres of influence in China. The issuing of the Open Door Policy by the United States prevented other countries from colonizing China. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion was aimed at removing foreign influence from China. This failed rebellion also threatened China’s independence. Warlords continued to exert influence in China, which held back the opportunity for progress.

A group of people, led by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, pushed for major reforms in China. Some of the people involved in the revolutionary movement had western educations and wanted to see changes in China. They weren’t satisfied with the limited reforms made by the Qing Dynasty. In 1910, fighting broke out in a region of China that eventually turned into a full-scale revolt. The emperor gave up the throne, ending the Qing Dynasty, and creating the Republic of China.

How old are the narrator and Sheila Mant in the short story "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant"?

W. D Wetherell's story “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant” is about two teenagers who meet during one summer vacation. This kind of story is often called a “coming of age” story, (in literary circles sometimes referred to as a “bildungsroman”). The focus in such a story is usually the development of the main character, including some sort of significant character change.

Teenage years are all about change, whether we like it or not. While the most obvious changes are occurrings to our bodies, we are also changing psychologically, socially, morally, and spiritually. Wetherell chose these young characters so that he could focus on the important lesson that the unnamed male learns on his ill-fated date with Sheila Mant.

The reader finds out pretty quickly how old the narrator is; here are the first couple of lines from the story:

There was a summer in my life when the only creature that seemed lovelier to me than a largemouth bass was Sheila Mant. I was fourteen.

That's a nice opening sentence, packed with meaning. We know immediately that the narrator is going to be torn between two things: his love of fishing and a girl.

It doesn't take long to find out how old Sheila is. In the next paragraph the narrator tells us:

Sheila was the middle daughter—at seventeen, all but out of reach.

She is “out of reach” in more ways than one, but the age difference is certainly important at that stage in life. By the end of the story Sheila has dumped the narrator at the fair for an older guy, Eric Caswell, who offers her a ride home in his Corvette. The narrator then tells us, in the story's final paragraph, that he learned not to make that sort of mistake again.

What is one example of a motif in Fahrenheit 451?

Ray Bradbury’s 1953 sci fi novel, Fahrenheit 451, is chock full of highly prophetic themes. To help his readers really feel and contemplate his messages, Bradbury makes vivid use of motifs throughout the novel, which are images, objects, ideas, or phrases that occur regularly throughout the story to support and build on the themes. Perhaps the most pervasive motif throughout the novel is Bradbury’s recurring use of nature imagery to highlight the theme of artificiality.

Physically, the characters live in a completely urban, artificial world with cement under their feet, T.V. walls all around them, and theme parks filled with violent activities instead of nature. Emotionally, the effect on individuals is cold and isolating from nature and from each other. To compensate, they have named many of the objects in their lives after things in nature, creating an artificial sense of the natural world. For example, although Montag’s job is to destroy the homes of people who own books, he imagines that the fire looks like a “swarm of fireflies.” Also, the tiny radios that citizens constantly wear in their ears are called "Seashells," yet rather than being at the ocean communing with nature or sharing time with family, they are cutting themselves off from real human interaction to listen to their music and programs. Mildred doesn’t even take hers out at night, and Montag has a hard time getting her to talk to him because she is always tuned in to her Seashells. Using nature terminology to describe unnatural objects and behaviors serves to heighten our understanding of the artificial way of life Bradbury is warning us about.

More often, this nature motif is portrayed through animal imagery, which surfaces regularly throughout the novel. The story of a beautiful, mythological bird, the phoenix, appears several times, suggesting that humans must recreate ourselves time and again after self-destruction. Bradbury describes the burning pages of the books as “pigeon-winged,” portraying how this society is killing all that is natural. They call their cars “beetles” and their firetrucks “salamanders,” furthering the illusion of nature around them. Even the scarier things in life are given natural names. Montag refers to the stomach pump which is used to save his wife from her drug overdose as a “black cobra” with an eye that can peer down into Mildred’s emptiness. Even the death machine that hunts down and eliminates citizens who harbor books is given an animal name—“the Mechanical Hound.” It sleeps and moves and even growls like a dog. But we never hear of any actual pets in the novel (other than the poor critters the firemen set loose for their own entertainment as they watch the Hound practice killing). Although the characters use animal and nature words in their everyday language, there is no resulting warmth or connection to their world or each other, because they still live in an artificial manner.

Aside from a brief meeting with a girl who values nature, it is not until Montag escapes the empty urban existence, leaving the Hound and the helicopters and the cameras behind, that true nature imagery enters the novel. The cocooning river floats him to the safety of the countryside, while the stars overhead remind him of the power and importance of the natural world. “The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider” what really matters in life.

How does the endocrine system interact with other major systems within the human body?

The endocrine system consists of endocrine glands that secrete hormones throughout the body.

It uses the circulatory system to transport the hormones to where they’re needed – the glands secrete hormones directly into the blood so it can be carried to different organs and tissues in the body.

One of the endocrine glands is the pancreas, which plays an important role in the digestive system. The carbs that we digest are metabolized into sugars, and insulin (a hormone produced by the pancreas) regulates the sugars, determining whether they remain in the bloodstream to be used for energy or are stored in the tissues.

Reproductive hormones released by the endocrine glands control the formation of sex cells in the reproductive system.

When your body reacts to something in its environment, hormones from the endocrine system are released and provide feedback to the brain, prompting your nervous system into action. A major endocrine gland, the pituitary gland, is regulated by neurohormones secreted by the hypothalamus, a component of the nervous system. Reproductive hormones released by either the ovaries or the testes (both endocrine glands) affects the development of the nervous system.

Some hormones released by the pituitary gland control the rate at which we breathe in our respiratory system.

Another major endocrine gland, the thyroid, affects cell growth rate – which affects all the systems.

In "Dulce et Decorum Est," what is the grim joke of "blood-shod"?

The narrator describes the plight of the foot soldiers during World War I.  They march and they march, through mud, bent over double from carrying their heavy packs.  All the men are exhausted and disheartened, but they have no choice but to march on.  The speaker says that "Many had lost their boots, / But limped on, blood-shod" (lines 6-7).  In other words, if a soldier lost his boots somehow, he would have no other option but to continue on or be left behind to die.  So, even soldiers without boots would continue to march, over battlefields and rocks, bloodying their feet.  In fact, there might eventually be so much blood that it would actually appear that they were wearing shoes made of blood: thus they appeared to be blood shod.  It is an incredibly jarring image that sounds terribly painful and indicates just how tortuous being a soldier in this war was. 

What different features do seeds have to aid dispersal?

Seed dispersal is the process by which seeds are transported away from the parent plant, thus enabling lesser competition from the parent plant and higher chances of survival. Seed dispersal is carried out by a number of agents, including wind, water, animals, human beings, fire, etc. Depending on which agent is preferred, the seeds have different adaptations. Some of these are listed here:

• Some seeds have hooks or burs on their surface that allow them to attach to animal skins or furs, thus facilitating transport across large distances.


• Some seeds are very light and thus can be blown away by the wind.


• Another adaptation to allow wind dispersal is "wings" or fluff. Such unique structures allow the seeds to remain airborne for a longer time and thus enable dispersal across longer distances.


• Seeds can also have structures that generate higher buoyancy, thus keeping them afloat in water. Such seeds are also often waterproof.


• Some seeds are also encased in hard shells and can only be released by fires strong enough to kill the adult trees. These are uniquely adapted to dispersal by fire (although these hardly travel any distance and actually take up the space left vacant by the now burnt parent tree).

Hope this helps. 

From Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, please provide 2-3 quotes that show people's racist attitudes changed.

To say that any one individual changed from being racist in Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird would be stretching it. After the trial of Tom Robinson, it would be more precise to say that the Cunninghams from Old Sarum took a baby step towards becoming less racist. Right before the trial started, Link Deas told Atticus that he was most worried about "that Old Sarum bunch" acting up and causing problems (145). Deas was referring to the Cunninghams who live in the forest and have been a large growing family for many generations in Maycomb county. That means that their ancestors probably owned slaves or at least fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. This also suggests that they would not support a black man's word against a white man's on any day of the week. Yet again, this is the family who takes the baby step forward. Both Atticus and Miss Maudie have great explanations for the Cunninghams as well as Maycomb as a whole.

First, Atticus explains to Jem and Scout the following about Mr. Cunningham (Walter's father) after the mob incident:

"Mr. Cunningham is basically a good man . . . he just has his blind spots along with the rest of us. . . So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses, didn't it? . . .That proves something that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human" (157).

Atticus is teaching the kids that people are good at heart even if they get riled up in mobs sometimes. This event didn't change Mr. Cunningham's views on race, necessarily, but Scout's innocence brought him down from his mob mentality enough for him to make a better choice than to hurt someone. The fact that Mr. Cunningham could be talked down from killing a black man says that he can be reasoned with--to a point-- and that's a good step for 1935 in the deep South.

Later, Atticus finds out that it is one of the Cunninghams on the jury who stood his ground for Tom Robinson during the deliberation time. Jem is amazed when his father tells him this and responds with the following:

"Golly Moses . . . one minute they're tryin' to kill him and the next they're tryin' to turn him loose. . . I'll never understand those folks as long as I live" (222).

Clearly this shows that times are changing the minds and attitudes of some of the people in Maycomb, even to the shock of a young boy.

One last quote that shows that the attitude of Maycomb has shifted is when Miss Maudie says the following to Aunt Alexandra after Atticus has just gone to tell Helen Robinson that her husband was shot trying to escape prison. Alexandra asks Maudie who actually cares about what Atticus is doing for that town and Maudie says,

"The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord's kindness am I" (236).

When once Maycomb could have been full of racist people, Maudie is saying that the ones who come from the best family backgrounds support Atticus and fair play. Even though they may be peaceful and not outspoken, they still show their support in different ways and that is a fundamental change in attitude, too.

Answer the following questions with accept or reject, and explain why? 1) A force can be defined by the equation "w=mg". 2) If an object is...

1) Accept. According to Newton's second law of motion, force is defined as the product of mass (m) of an object and its acceleration (a). If an object is dropped from a height (on Earth), its acceleration can be given as acceleration due to gravity, g (that is, a = g). Then the force on the object (or its weight) will be given as F = W = mg.

2) Accept. When we throw an object upwards, its velocity reduces and it ultimately comes to a stop and then fall down, because of Earth's gravity. This clearly shows that as the object goes up, its kinetic energy (= `1/2 mv^2` ) reduces (as the velocity decreases) and ultimately becomes 0 (when velocity is 0, at the highest point in its trajectory). As the kinetic energy decreases, the object gains height and its potential energy (given as mgh, where h is the height of the object) increases. 

3) Accept. The horizontal and vertical motion can take place simultaneously, but are independent of each other. Think about it this way, if you are walking and the cellphone slips from your hand, it will fall down right next to your feet. Same will the scenario, if you were just standing and it fell down. In both case, your motion is independent of phone's vertical motion and it will take the same amount of time to fall down. In other words, the vertical motion is affected by Earth's gravity and that is what govern's it. According to equations of motion, `V = 1/2 g t^2`  , the acceleration due to gravity will determine the motion and hence vertical motion will always take the same time.

4) Accept. The more massive an object is, higher is its inertia. Inertia can be defined as the property of an object that enables it to resist a change in its state of motion. That is, inertia will help an object stay at rest or in continuous motion, until sufficient external force overcomes inertia and cause a change in object's state of motion. Think about it this way, we can move a chair or a bicycle, but how difficult it is move a house or a car. Would you rather move a cat or an elephant. Thus, more mass means more inertia.

5) Accept. The atomic number of an element is same as the number of protons. The atomic mass is the sum of number of protons and neutrons in an atom. When the atomic number changes, that is number of protons change; so does its atomic mass. The elements are arranged in the periodic table and each element corresponds to a different atomic number. When the atomic number changes, the element itself changes. For example, the object changes from carbon to nitrogen as one proton is added to it. And they each have a different atomic mass.

6) Accept. Power is defined as work done per unit time. If we increase the amount of work done (while keeping the time constant), the power will increase. Think about it this way, if you take 2 minutes to climb a set of stairs and then you do the same twice in 2 minute (while running up the stairs); your body would have done more work and hence, would have spent more power on the exercise.

Hope this helps.  

What is the cultural setting of the book Bud, Not Buddy?

The cultural setting of Bud, Not Buddy involves African Americans in the Midwestern United States during the Great Depression. This setting plays a large part in the plot. The time and place of the story are established through numerous references to various historical conditions and events.

The main character, Bud, is an African American boy moving through the foster care system when he runs away to find the man he thinks is his father. Out in the world, Bud experiences the culture of the times in the form of other orphan runaways, soup kitchen lines, cardboard shanty towns and the freight trains people would attempt to hop onto in order to relocate in search of better opportunities. The hunger, homelessness and joblessness of the times are seamlessly woven into the plot.

One last cultural setting applicable to the plot is the African American jazz music world of the early 1900s. The man Bud thinks is his father brings that part of the culture into the story. He is a regionally famous jazz musician.

In the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, what are some direct quotes that reveal society's view of Hester as a sinner?

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there are a number of quotes that show that the 17th century society thinks of Hester as a sinner.  Hester Prynne makes her first appearance in chapter two, entitled "The Market Place."  In this chapter, Hawthorne draws attention to the townsfolk that are waiting outside of the prison, stating that amongst them "religion and law were almost identical," meaning that lawbreakers were essentially considered sinners.  Even before Hester emerges from the prison, a number of townsfolk begin to identify her as sinful.  Many of her harshest critics are older women.  Hawthorne writes of "a hard-featured dame of fifty" who says "[i]t would be greatly for the public behoof, if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne."  A malefactress is defined as a woman who violates the law or does evil.  Further, another mature women suggests that "they should have put a brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead [...] But she, -the naughty baggage,- little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown!"  At this time, another, younger woman interjects, saying "let her cover her mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart."  This discussion of desire to brand Hester also reveals that the townsfolk see her as sinful.  Even the younger woman, who displays some level of empathy to Hester's plight, identifies the severity of the sin, and Hester's inability to ever be free of it.

Perhaps the most harsh judgement comes from a woman whom Hawthorne refers to as "the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges," who says,

The woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die.  Is there not law for it?  Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book.  Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray!"

While opinions differ regarding the degree to which Hester should be punished, Hawthorne makes it clear that to Puritan Boston, Hester is sinful and should be made to suffer.

Why does Gillian decide to give Miss Hayden the money but not tell the lawyers?

This is a very interesting question! As we read the story, it is evident that Gillian is in love with Miss Miriam Hayden. Miriam is the former ward of Gillian's deceased uncle.

When Gillian is willed a thousand dollars by his uncle, he appears at a loss as to how to dispose of the money. However, when he discovers that Miriam has only been left a seal ring and ten dollars, he decides to bequeath the thousand dollars to her as a gift. After he hands the money over to the surprised Miriam, Gillian proceeds to provide a written record of his expenditure to the lawyers for their perusal. However, when he realizes that, upon prudent expenditure of the thousand dollars, he will be further bequeathed fifty thousand dollars, Gillian proceeds to tear up the written record of his expenditure.

Although he appears nonchalant and careless, Gillian privately harbors more substantive feelings: he is in love with Miriam. This is why he decides to give her the thousand dollars and also why he neglects to inform the lawyers about his actions. If Gillian had confessed his unselfish action to the lawyers, they would likely have released the fifty thousand dollars into his care. Instead, Gillian's act of love ensures that his beloved is amply provided for in the event of his uncle's death.

How is Zaroff arrogant in The Most Dangerous Game?

General Zaroff is arrogant in several ways. 

First, he is arrogant in that he thinks he is the greatest hunter.  He thinks that no animal stands a chance against him.  This is why is says he is bored with hunting animals.  This is also why he created a new game, where he hunts humans. 

Second, Zaroff has no qualms about killing people in a game.  This shows that he does not care about or value human life.  In essence he plays the role of God.  This shows an immense arrogance.  He believes that he holds the power of life and death. 

Finally, he is arrogant in hunting Rainsford.  In fact, he lets Rainsford go once, because he wants to hunt him again. Moreover, he does not expect Rainsford to go on the offensive. His pride and arrogance ultimately lead to his failure to calculate this fact. 

In Maniac Magee, what did Grayson mean to Maniac?

Grayson was very important to Maniac, because he was like family.

Grayson found Maniac when he was at a low point. Maniac had run away again, this time from the Beales. He loved the Beales like family, but they were black and he was white. It made people uncomfortable for him to be living with them. Maniac left to protect them.

Maniac ended up at the buffalo pen, and that is where Grayson found him. Grayson was the groundskeeper at the zoo. He was an old man who was very kind to Maniac. He immediately took him home, cleaned him up, fed him, and bought him new clothes.

At this point, Maniac wanted a family and a place to belong more than ever. Grayson provided that for him. He did not insist that Maniac go to school, because Maniac said he would run away. He did as much as he could for Maniac.

From then on Maniac was on the job with Grayson every afternoon. They raised fences, mended fences, hauled stone, patched asphalt, painted, trimmed trees. They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, sometimes in the equipment room, sometimes at a restaurant. They spent weekends together. (Ch. 25)

Maniac taught Grayson to read, and the old man gave Maniac a home. When Grayson died, it was a devastating loss for Maniac again. He had lost his parents and the Beales, and now he lost his latest family. Even though Grayson was old, Maniac was not expecting his death. It left him with no place to go, once again.

Maniac drifted from hour to hour, day to day, alone with his memories, a stunned and solitary wanderer. He ate only to keep from starving, warmed his body only enough to keep it from freezing to death, ran only because there was no reason to stop. (Ch. 33)

Eventually, Maniac returned to the Beales. They were his true family. He belonged there regardless of race. With the Beales, he could be “nothing but Jeffrey.” Maniac missed Grayson terribly, but was happy to have a normal home again.

Is Lieutenant Kotler from the book Boy in the Striped Pajamas good or evil? Explain with 3 strong points.

Lieutenant Kotler is an evil man in the novel Boy in the Striped Pajamas. There are several scenes that portray his evil nature. When Bruno first meets Lieutenant Kotler he does not like Kotler because he displays indignance towards him and treats him like a baby. Towards the end of Chapter 13, Pavel accidentally spills wine on Lieutenant Kotler. Boyne does not go into detail, but Bruno mentions that Kotler violently punishes Pavel for spilling the wine on him. Bruno says that Kotler's treatment of Pavel makes him cry, and Gretel looks away. Kotler is a violent man with a short temper. His brutal treatment of Pavel depicts his evil nature.

In Chapter 15, Kotler takes Shmuel from the concentration camp inside Bruno's house to clean shot glasses for an upcoming party. While Kotler is occupied with Bruno's mother, Bruno gives his friend some chicken to eat. When Kotler comes into the kitchen, he assumes that Shmuel stole food out of the fridge. Bruno is terrified of Kotler and says that he doesn't know Shmuel because he fears Kotler's reaction. Later on, Bruno mentions that the next time he sees Shmuel he has bruises on his face. Shmuel tells Bruno that Lieutenant Kotler beat him severely for eating. The fact that Kotler physically assaults a child who is suffering from malnutrition portrays his evil character.

As the novel progresses, Boyne indirectly suggests that Kotler is having an affair with the Commandant's wife. Bruno mentions that they are very close friends, and Kotler makes his mother laugh more than his father does. It is implied that Kotler is transferred after the Commandant finds out about the affair. Kotler's affair depicts his disrespect towards his authority figures and lack of loyalty to the Commandant. Lieutenant Kotler is truly an evil character throughout the novel.

What are some of the narrator's personal characteristics?

Nick Carraway, the narrator, comes from old money and graduated from Yale (though his financial circumstances are somewhat reduced at this point in his life).  He fought in World War I, and, when he came home, he no longer felt satisfied by his home in the Midwest.  He decided to move east, to New York, to learn the bond business, and his father agreed to finance his endeavors for one year.  As he tells us in the first chapter, Nick is "inclined to reserve all judgments" when it comes to other people because he agrees with his father that not everyone has had the advantages that he's had.  He has a sense of humor, a trait we see in his first interaction with his cousin, Daisy.  Nick is obliging and patient, waiting quietly and awkwardly while Tom sleeps with his mistress in the next room when they go to New York City.  In the beginning at least, though he has seen a lot in war, Nick is still relatively innocent and naive; by the end of the novel, however, he seems a great deal less innocent and more disillusioned by what he has seen of society.

If a Na atom were to become an ion, would the ion be bigger, smaller or the same size as the neutrally-charged atom?

Sodium ions are smaller than neutrally charged sodium atoms.

An ion is a charged atom. Ions are charged because they gain or lose electrons. Electrons are negative subatomic particles that move around the small, dense central nucleus of an atom. Because electrons are negative, the charge of an atom changes when electrons are gained or lost. Cations are positively charged ions that have lost electrons. Anions are negatively charged ions that have gained additional electrons.

Atoms gain or lose electrons in order to obtain the octet rule. The octet rule states that, in order to feel stable, all main-group elements want to have eight valence electrons. Valence electrons are the electrons found in the outermost orbital of an atom.

Neutrally charged sodium atoms have one valence electron. In order to fulfill the octet rule, this single valence electron is lost. In this way, sodium drops to the next lower orbital that is full.

Because a sodium atom loses an energy level (orbital) when becoming an ion, sodium ions are smaller than neutrally charged sodium atoms.

What stylistic choices does Shakespeare use to portray Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

While critics such as Rene Girard understand Hermia/Helena and Lysander/Demetrius as interchangeable parts, Shakespeare does indeed differentiate between the two women, who happen to be friends. 

 Shakespeare uses contrast with Hermia as a stylistic technique to portray Helena. Though Helena says that "Through Athens I am thought as fair as she," and this may be true, she has a less assertive personality than her friend. She makes statements that the more dominant Hermia doesn't, such as calling herself Demetrius' "spaniel" and saying to him, "spurn me, strike me, neglect me ..." as he is trying to get away from her to pursue Hermia. 

When Lysander, having the love potion put in his eyes, falls in love with Helena and turns on Hermia, Hermia does not become abject like Helena. First, she says to Lysander: "Why are you grown so rude?," then she turns on Helena fiercely, calling her a "cankerblossom!" and a "thief of love" and threatening to claw her eyes out. 

We also learn that Helena is taller than Hermia through comparison, as Hermia surmises that Helena's height won Lysander's heart: "she hath urged her height ... her tall personage." Hermia calls herself a dwarf in comparison. 

Shakespeare also lets us learn about Helena through her soliloquies. After Hermia and Lysander exit the stage in Act 1, scene 1, Helena reveals her wisdom about love, saying love is unstable and more a figment of the imagination than anything else: Love looks not with the eye, but with the mind ... Love [is] said to be a child/Because in choice he is so oft beguiled." This explains her reasoning in thinking she can follow Demetrius into the forest and change his mind about loving Hermia. 

Later, weary from what she thinks are her three friends ganging up to make fun of her, Helena speaks of her sadness and desire to sleep in a short soliloquy, wishing the night would end, for "sleep sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye." From this, we an gain insight into how hurt she is by her friends' behavior. 

Shakespeare uses techiques that let his characters, including Helena, emerge though soliloquy and comparison.

What life lessons does "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck teach?

The Pearl can be seen as a parable of the danger of placing one’s hopes on one thing, no matter if it is material or emotional. The moment Kino finds the pearl, he dreams of how his life will change, of how his child will have the advantages that he never had. He sees his life differently, with the pearl as the means of fulfilling his new destiny. He retreats into himself, not trusting even his wife to protect the pearl. He strikes Juana when she tries to throw it back into the sea, fearing that it has brought evil upon them. In a sense, it has.

The story is also a warning that the motives of others should not always be trusted. Kino sees through the interest of the doctor and the priest, as well as the dishonesty of the pearl merchants. “Trust oneself” is Kino’s new motto; others are out for themselves. Whether this is a desirable life lesson or not remains to be seen. Kino’s distrust leads him to murder out of self-defense, perhaps more quickly than was necessary. It is true that other people were after the pearl, but Kino is holding it so closely, and placing such hopes on it, that he reacts violently when it is threatened. This leads back to the main theme: don’t place your hopes on anything that might pass away, bringing evil (both from within and without).

How might the reader's connection to the plot/characters change if the story were told through a different point of view or through the eyes of a...

This is an excellent question because it causes the reader to really think about the narrator of the book in relation to the other characters.  Let us look at the narrator first, and then figure out how the story might be different from other characters' perspectives.

The narrator, of course, is Misha.  He is very much an innocent orphan who is only called "Stopthief" until he is "born" when Uri gives him the name "Misha."  We then follow Misha through his adventures with Uri's group of boys, his new friendship with a Jewish girl (Janina), and their travels to the ghetto of Warsaw, Poland.  Misha survives the Holocaust and eventually has a (dysfunctional) family of his own.

If the story was told by Uri, it would be quite different.  Where Misha is innocent, Uri is wise.  Uri is wise enough to dodge the "Jackboots," to hide out in places like cellars and stables, and to know that above all else to avoid being labeled as a Jew.  If the story was told by this character, we would hear a lot more about the realities of life in the Warsaw, Poland in the late 1930s.

If the story was told by Janina, the focus would be on friendship and compassion.  Janina is most certainly Jewish and proud of her faith.  She is less innocent than Misha, but not by much. If the story was told by her, she would talk lots about her Jewish rituals and why they are important to her.  We would also learn a lot about her friendship with Misha from a girl's perspective.

If the story was told by Misha's granddaughter, Wendy, it would be a very different story indeed.  It would need, then, to be written as a frame story, with Misha's life being the meat of the story.  Wendy, like her grandfather, would probably focus a lot on identity and the fact that it was her grandfather that bestowed his upon her.  She would also talk about bestowing him his real family identity by calling him "Poppynoodle."

So, as you can see, depending on the character telling the story, the focus would shift greatly depending on whether it was Uri, Janina, Wendy (or even another minor character not spoken of here).

Do you think it is odd that the speaker in "The Night of the Scorpion" does nothing but stand and watch his mother suffer from the scorpion sting?...

At first it does seem very odd that the speaker does nothing to help his mother when she is suffering so violently, but when we consider the implications of the speaker’s age as well as the nature of the village and the other members of the speaker’s family, it does not seem such a heartless reaction.

We do not know how old the speaker is when the incident occurs, but we can assume he is young, because he does nothing but watch the action unfold.  “They searched for him [the scorpion],” the speaker says, and “They sat around/On the floor with my mother in the center.”  The child watches his “father, sceptic, rationalist,/trying every curse and blessing.”  They refers to the people who come from the village to care for the mother – the adults in the room.  If the child were older, he would most likely be asked to help the adults in searching, and yet, if we assume he is young, we can imagine that he has been told to stand on a chair or something and stay out of the way, for his own safety.  And so, given that the speaker is a young child when the incident occurs, it does not seem at all odd that he does nothing to help his mother – what could he do?  As a child he is helpless, and must be kept safe and out of the way himself.

In addition to this, the villagers in the poem are very religious, and their beliefs make them calm before the suffering of the speaker’s mother.  They “buzzed the name of God a hundred times” to better catch the scorpion, and they explain the incident away with the ideas of reincarnation and karma:

May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world

against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh

of desire, and your spirit of ambition

The village clearly has a religious philosophy that places such human suffering as the mother’s into a larger context of universal good and evil, as well as the balance of these opposites within the individual.  Though the speaker’s father is a skeptic, and tries as best he can to ease his wife’s pain as the rest of the villagers sit and watch the poison run its course, we do not know to what tenets the speaker himself is espoused.  The child – and the mother, for that matter – could be of the same mind as the rest of the villagers, and are content that this pain is part of the way of the world, and must simply be endured for the bettering of the soul.  Or in any case, the speaker could be so young that he hasn’t formulated any opinions on the matter for himself; he could be at an age where he takes everything at face value.  In which case there is no point in intervening; one should not mess with the universal balance of good and evil.

And whatever the reason, no one in the room seems to expect anything more or less of the speaker than his watchful absorption of the scene.  This would lead us to believe that the speaker is fulfilling his role within this society, by merely sitting and watching, which substantiates the assumption that he is quite young – young enough to know to stay out of the way as the adults handle the problem, and young enough to be an accepting conformist to the religious assumptions at the root of the villagers’ inaction.

What is Angela Wexler's connection with Sam Westing in The Westing Game?

Angela Wexler is Sam Westing’s grand-niece and she looks like his daughter.

Grace Wexler, Angela’s mother, claims that Sam Westing is her uncle.  This makes sense, because Grace Wexler looks like Sam Westing’s daughter, who is deceased.  If Grace is Westing’s niece, that makes Angela his grand-niece. 

Angela is “golden-haired” and “angel-faced” (Ch. 3).  She is getting married to Denton Deere.  She is her mother’s pawn, doing whatever her mother tells her to do.  This is in contrast to her sister Turtle, who is independent and boisterous.  Turtle believes that her sister doesn’t really want to get married.  Angela feels like everyone only cares about her fiancé, as if she doesn’t exist without him.

Flora, the dressmaker, is the one who makes the connection between Angela and Sam Westing.

“Angela will make such a beautiful bride. Funny how she reminds me of her.”

“Angela reminds you of your daughter?” the judge asked.

“Oh my, no. Angela reminds me of another young girl I made a wedding dress for: Violet Westing.” (Ch. 13)

Angela is tormented by her coming wedding, and how it will end her future.  Their stories are very similar.  Violet was forced into a marriage by her mother too.  She was supposed to marry George Theodorakis, but she committed suicide.  This is why George Theodorakis and his family are there.  He is not exactly an heir, but close because he would have been.  Theodorakis runs the café.

Violet Westing's death destroyed her father.  Her mother clearly was deeply affected too.  She lives under the name of Crow.  Westing wanted to be close to all of his family members.  Since his daughter died, he had been lonely and lost.  Sometimes being rich isn't everything.  Angela chooses not to get married, thus preventing her from making the same mistake Violet did or ending up the same way—dead.

What is the plot in the book Whirligig?

Brent Bishop attends a private high school in the Chicago area. One night he goes to a party thinking to impress a girl. When his plan backfires, he loses his temper and attempts to drive home drunk. He causes a car accident that kills another high school student. In order to atone for his crime, he is asked by the victim’s mother to build versions of her favorite wooden toy, a whirligig, and to install them in the four corners of the country: Washington, California, Florida, and Maine. For the rest of the story, Brent rides a Greyhound bus from one location to the next, building and erecting the required whirligigs. Along the way, he learns much about traveling, woodcraft and tools, the countryside, other people, and most of all, himself.

Who does Lyddie kick in Lyddie?

Lyddie kicks Mr. Marsden when he tries to kiss her.

Lyddie is a tough girl. She never lets anyone get anything over on her. When Lyddie is at the tavern, she hears a story about a frog in a butter churn. The frog falls in and continues to kick. Lyddie views the story metaphorically, and so does Triphena.

"Ehyeh," Triphena continued. "Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter" (Ch. 4).

Lyddie’s favorite phrase is “we can still hop.” She believes that no matter what happens, she will continue kicking. When she loses her job at the tavern for visiting home, she does not give up. She goes and gets a job in a factory.

Lyddie’s factory job is not without its hazards. Her overseer, Mr. Marsden, is a pig. He often tries to take advantage of the girls in his factory. Lyddie is not going to stand for that, though. She will always kick.

Mr. Marsden has had his attention on Lyddie for a while. Lyddie is made uncomfortable by him, but doesn’t realize his intentions until she gets sick. It is then that he makes his move. He tries to kiss her, and she kicks him.

What made her do it? Illness? Desperation? She'd never know. But she raised her booted foot and stomped her heel down with all her might. He gave a cry, and, dropping his arms, doubled over. It was all the time she needed (Ch. 16).

Lyddie definitely proves that she is the frog in the butter churn. Even sick, she is able to fend off her predatory boss. After she recovers, Lyddie assumes that she has lost her job. Mr. Marsden does indeed have it in for her. When she catches him doing the same thing to Brigid and attacks him again, this time with a bucket, he does get her fired.

Even being dismissed from the factory does not stop Lyddie. Still kicking, she gives Brigid a letter written to Mr. Marsden’s wife and tells her to mail it if she has any trouble. She lets Mr. Marsden know she will not tolerate him going after Brigid.

How can you protect the unstable oils stored at home or contained in foods?

Unstable oils, like soybean, canola, and sunflower seed oils are highly susceptible to spoiling through oxidation. Oxidation is a series of chemical reactions which causes the molecules of fats and oils to break down and sometimes form new, unwanted substances. If an oil or fat has been oxidized, it may smell rancid or musty or change in color, texture, and taste.

You can help to protect foods high in unstable oils or the concentrated oils themselves by doing a few things. First, I recommend storing unstable oils in the fridge. Heat plays a big part in the molecular exchange of oxidation. Storing your oils or fatty foods in the fridge will also help to minimize exposure to UV rays, which may encourage the spoiling process. Second, make sure that all containers are tightly sealed to keep out moisture and air out. Both water and air contain oxygen which causes spoiling of oils.

Be sure to keep oils or fatty foods (like nuts, seeds, crisps) away from damp, warm areas or places which go through a lot of temperature change. For example, storing your bottle of cooking oil right above the stove is probably not a good idea. Steam from cooked foods and the heat which radiates from the stove-top can cause oils to go rancid very quickly.

If you want to use an alternative to unstable oils in cooking, consider using coconut oil. With any cooking oils, try to follow the same precautions against heat, moisture, and air as I've described above.

In the Grapes of Wrath, is Tom Joad powerful? How does he demonstrate power?

Tom Joad's power in The Grapes of Wrath is in the strength of his character. It is shown in his ability to adapt, change when necessary, inspire others, and expand the circle of those he cares for and about. He is also a relatively strong man physically, but his important power is internal.

When we first meet Tom he has just been paroled from prison for killing a man in self-defense, and has survived by taking it a day at a time. At this point in Steinbeck's novel, Tom is mainly concerned for himself, and how to survive as a man on parole during the Great Depression. When he reconnects with his family it becomes clear to him that he is the one on whom the others depend. For the first time he has to be responsible not just for himself, but for others. At first this extends mostly to his family and friends, but eventually he comes to care for all the "downtrodden", poor, and abused people. He works to help others, even though this makes him far more likely to come to the attention of the authorities. Tom's power is shown in his willingness to put himself at risk for others. When his mother tells him he is likely to be killed for his work, he responds,

Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.

How does Hardy convey Marty's sense of despair in "The Pine Planters"?

Hardy conveys Marty's sense of despair through descriptive imagery and other literary devices.

In the poem, Marty laments that the man she is infatuated with is oblivious to her state of mind and physical presence. He does not notice that she is chilled from standing still; to him, she is no more sentient than the 'woodland' which 'holds him alone.' This is because 'he has seen one fairer;' Marty knows that she is helpless against a competitor who holds a man so powerfully that he has become insensible to sexual cues from other women.

The sense of despair is amplified with the repetition of the phrase 'so many' in the sixth stanza. Marty's anguish is palpable, because no matter how hard she tries to prove to her co-worker that she is a worthy woman, he is impervious to her efforts. A sense of loss is conveyed in the words 'hope is gone,' further reinforcing the despair Marty fails. She will 'bear it ever/And make no sign' of her desperation; this imagery of a silent martyr highlights forbearance in the face of suffering and despair. The mood conveyed is that there will be no change to Marty's circumstances no matter what she does.

In Part II of the poem, Hardy extends the sense of despair through the use of personification. The repetition of the word 'sigh' indicates that the trees share the same miserable existence as Marty. Like Marty, the trees are helpless to change their personal circumstances. They are 'voiceless' even though they sigh. Since Fate has not decreed that they remain seeds, they must daily face the relentless power of nature 'in this bleak spot;' the trees must 'grieve' through 'storm and drought,' 'unable to leave' or 'change its clime.' Here, the sense of permanent impotence reinforces the despairing mood of the poem. The last lines of the poem hint that even the prospect of death will provide no solace.

Is Scout right when she says that "Mr. Dolphus Raymond is an evil man" in To Kill A Mockingbird?

Mr. Dolphus is not an evil man; there have been malicious rumors about him because of his fiancee's suicide and because he simply does not conform to the social mores of Maycomb. 

In Chapter 16 the children watch the crowd forming to attend the trial and they observe Mr. Dolphus Raymond with the Negroes in the far corner of the square. Jem explains his association with the black people as caused by his fiancee's suicide years ago. Supposedly, she found out that he had "a colored woman" that he wanted to keep even after being married. But, this is rumor and no one knows exactly why the fiancee shot herself.

Later, in Chapter 19 as Tom Robinson is on the stand, Mr. Gilbert berates Tom when he says that he felt sorry for Mayella, twisting Tom's meaning with the suggestive tone of his rhetorical question, "You felt sorry for her?" that Tom, a Negro, should not have dared to have had the audacity to criticize this white person (no matter that she is "trash"). 

This cruel, insulting treatment of Tom causes the sensitive Dill to cry. So, Jem and Scout take Dill outside. Then, in Chapter 20, they encounter Mr. Raymond, who comes over to comfort Dill. He confides in the children that his drink, hidden by a paper sack, is merely Coca-Cola, but he pretends to be a drunkard so that the Maycomb high society can reconcile his behavior more easily than to admit that he is repulsed by their own hypocrisy. "It ain't honest, but it's mighty helpful to folks," he explains; for, this behavior can be explained from their perspectives.

Further, with great kindness, Mr. Raymond explains to Dill that his tears are for "the simple hell people give other people--without even thinking," and that the white people of the town never consider that the blacks are people, too. As more explanation, he tells the children to just step back into the courthouse and they will learn even more about their town. 

What is the background of the book A Christmas Carol?

Charles Dickens, who was a celebrity in his time, used his writing to emphasize the need for social change in nineteenth century England. Having experienced poverty and desolation as a child, and seeing the deplorable living and working conditions of the lower classes, he used his writing as a vehicle for social reform.

He was empowered to write A Christmas Carol after a visit to one of the many “ragged schools” that existed in England. During his visit to the Field Lane school located in the Saffron Hill district of London, he was dismayed at the appalling conditions. He had a particular interest in the education of the poorest, lowliest children, and this visit inspired him to begin a magazine article which developed into the book, A Christmas Carol. This book highlighted the feelings of the upper, wealthy class toward the poor and destitute in the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, who refused to make a donation to the needy on Christmas Eve. Instead Scrooge asks about the workhouses and prisons which he believed were vehicles of social reform. The plight of the poor but working class was developed in the Cratchit family who lived a humble existence without the money to care for their sick child.

Through Ebenezer Scrooge and his ghostly visitations, Dickens advances his concerns of what may happen to society in the absence of immediate changes – the poor getting poorer, the sick getting sicker, the lower classes trapped in a spiral of poverty, a widening gulf between those with much and those with little.

Charles Dickens cared deeply for the poor, uneducated youth of London and used his talents as a writer to bring notoriety to their plight.