What is the setting of The Story of My Life by Helen Keller?

Helen Keller's story begins in Tuscumbia, a small town in northern Alabama, in 1880. Her family's house was called Ivy Green, and she particularly loved the garden and lands surrounding the house. After a childhood illness made her blind and deaf, Helen often explored the gardens by sight and found solace in nature. Because she lived in such a small, rural town, her parents had to consult a doctor in Baltimore to find help for Helen. This doctor sent the family to consult Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., who arranged for Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, to come to Tuscumbia from the Perkins Institute in Boston.

In 1888, Keller visited the Perkins Institution for the Blind with Anne Sullivan and then went to Cape Cod, where she first experienced the ocean. In 1893, Keller attended the World's Fair in Chicago with Alexander Graham Bell and the inauguration of President Cleveland in Washington. She also visited Niagara. In 1896, Keller went to Cambridge, Massachusetts to prepare to enter Radcliffe, the sister school of Harvard at the time. She lived in Cambridge for several years while attending Radcliffe. 

In what way does Andrew Marvell present the male interpretation of love in "To His Coy Mistress"?

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is a poem that deals with many themes, especially the themes of love, time, human mortality, and the pursuit of pleasure. However, for all its complexity, "Mistress" is also a representation of the shallow, male interpretation of love, as it essentially equates love with sex.

Initially, the speaker insists that he wishes he were able to engage in a long courtship and get to know his lover in an intimate way. However, the speaker also asserts that this process is sadly impossible, because he and his mistress will get old and die. As such, the speaker concludes that it is necessary to love each other (have sex, in other words) while both parties are young and good looking so that they can have as much pleasure in life before they die.

The elevated verse of the piece suggests there's a certain logic to the speaker's argument, but it's important to remember that the speaker is advancing a stereotypically male (and even misogynistic) view of love. For the speaker, getting the most out of a romantic relationship means having sex (and, he implies, lots of it). As such, he essentially reduces the woman in the relationship to a body and nothing more. After all, the speaker is essentially saying that what's most important is the physical aspect of the relationship. Everything else (getting to know one another, developing a strong emotional bond, etc.) is secondary and ultimately superfluous for him. As such, the speaker advances a classically patriarchal view of love, as he callously reduces his female companion to a mere body and refuses to view the emotional development of a relationship as important.  

How do you prove Romeo and Juliet went to hell and not heaven?

We cannot definitively prove Romeo and Juliet would have gone to hell because we would first have to prove heaven and hell exist and, thus, that a particular god exists, a god who decides which people go to which place. What we can prove is that, according to the religion Romeo and Juliet appear to practice, the common belief is that they would have been bound for hell. 

Set in Italy in the late 16th century, we have reason to believe that the characters would practice Roman Catholicism. Further, the existence of Friar Lawrence (a Catholic cleric), as well as his prominence within Romeo and Juliet's lives seems to indicate they are Catholic: Romeo routinely goes to the friar for advice, and Juliet goes to the friar's cell to be married to Romeo under the pretext of needing to go to confession, a Catholic practice. For Catholics, the act of taking a life — any life, including one's own — is a mortal sin; they believe that one's life is the property of God. By destroying that life, one wrongly lays claim to something that belongs to God. Since Romeo and Juliet are Catholic (as would their families and, most likely, community be), they would believe that taking their own lives is a sin that would send them in hell.

How does the narrator meet the signalman in Charles Dickens's "The Signalman"?

As he walks in the countryside, the narrator sees and later meets the signalman, whom he spots by the train tracks below him, standing "on the top of the steep cutting." The signalman seems distracted because, rather than looking up, he turns himself around and looks down the tracks.

After the narrator calls a second time, the signalman turns himself around. Then, the narrator asks how to descend and reach this signalman; however, suddenly the earth shakes and the train in "a violent pulsation" passes through and skim[s] away over the landscape. When this thundering noise ends, the narrator follows the signalman's instructions and finds a rough zigzag path down the slope. 

Nearing the train tracks, the narrator notices the strange fear that the signalman exhibits as well as his gesture of "watchfulness and expectation." This reaction to him causes the narrator to stop and wonder momentarily as he reaches the spot where the man stands. Added to the "great dungeon" of the tunnel, the walls of which drip with the dampness, and the gloomy atmosphere and "forbidding air" of the place, there is a Gothic feel to this meeting.

What is the spirit of the law according to Montesquieu?

In his book, The Spirit of the Laws (actually De l'esprit des loix), Montesquieu defines his concept of the "spirit of the law" as the underlying social and cultural traits that drive a nation toward one sort of law versus another.

He believed that different cultures have tendencies toward republic, monarchy or depotism in varying degrees, referring to the "spirit of republic", the "spirit of monarchy", and the "spirit of despotism" in various cases. He considered Europe to be uniquely motivated toward liberty, especially his home of France in particular. He attributed much of this variation to features of the natural climate, attributing virtues of action to cold places and virtues of contemplation to hot places. While climate surely does influence the development of a culture, today Montesquieu's particular theories seem rather strange.

Montesquieu also sometimes used the term "spirit of the law" in a narrower (and more modern) sense of the intent of the law, as opposed to the "letter of the law" in all its technical details. The spirit of the law is in effect what it should have said, as opposed to what it actually did say.

Define transculent

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Why is Carolus Linnaeus so important?

Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707 - January 10, 1778), or Carolus Linnaeus in a Latin rendering, was a Swedish man who is well regarded as one of the founders of modern ecology and taxonomy. His work was the origin of binomial nomenclature, or the use of two names for an organism. Examples of this are Homo sapien (modern human) and Canis domesticus (domestic dog). These binomial names feature a genus and a species; the genus is a group of related animals, such as dogs, wolves, and dingos, while the species is one particular set of that group, like the grey wolf.

While most of his system for classification is no longer used, evidence of it is still strong within taxonomy, and many of the plants and animals he classified are still listed with the same names he gave them 250 years ago.

What is the conclusion of "The Happy Prince"?

The story concludes with the swallow dying at the feet of the Happy Prince. The Happy Prince is also taken down when the Mayor and the Town Councillors decide that he is no longer the beautiful statue he once was. After the Happy Prince is taken down, the Mayor and his Councillors decide that another statue must take his place. However, neither the Mayor nor each of the Councillors can come to an agreement about who the next statue will resemble.

Meanwhile, the town has the Happy Prince melted down, but they discover that his broken, leaden heart will not melt in the furnace. So, the workmen at the foundry discard the leaden heart in a dust-heap, next to the carcass of the dead swallow. The narrator then tells us that when God asks one of his angels to bring Him the two most precious things in the city, the angel brings him the leaden heart and the dead swallow. When he receives the two, God proclaims that the angel has rightly chosen. He then says that the swallow will sing forever in His garden in Paradise, and the Happy Prince will always praise Him in His city of gold.

Please explain what Stuart Hall means when he defines multiculturalism as ‘strategies and policies adopted to govern or manage the problems of...

One problem that you might be having with Hall’s definition is that it does not fit with the way we laypeople (non-academics) typically understand the idea of multiculturalism.  To us, multiculturalism tends to mean the acceptance of a variety of different cultures within one society.  In other words, we tend to think that multiculturalism is the opposite of the “melting pot” model of society in which people who come to a country assimilate into that country’s dominant culture.  For us, multiculturalism is having to choose whether we want to hear English or Spanish from a computerized voice when we call for customer service.  It is seeing Muslim women wearing head scarves instead of just dressing like American women.  Multiculturalism, then, is simply the fact of having many cultures within our one society.

The problem is that this is not the type of multiculturalism that Hall is talking about in this quote.  In the article in this link, we are given a fuller definition of multiculturalism.  It tells us that multiculturalism

also stands for a desire to find the cultural and political norms appropriate to more heterogeneous societies within and across nations…

This is the type of multiculturalism that Hall seems to be discussing in this quote.  So, let us look at what the actual quote means.

In the quote, Hall refers to “multi-cultural societies.”  This simply means societies like the US or the UK which contain people from many different cultures.  He says that these societies “throw up” “problems of diversity and multiplicity.”  In other words, multicultural societies have problems that arise because of all the differences within those societies.  “Diversity and multiplicity” simply means that not everyone in these societies is the same.  There are many different cultures within those societies.  This “throws up” problems because people from the different cultures may have trouble accepting one another.  This would not be a problem in a society that was made up only of people from a single culture.

Finally, Hall says that multiculturalism consists of “strategies and policies adopted to govern or manage” these problems.  What he is saying, then, is that multiculturalism is not just the fact that we have multiple cultures in our society.  Instead, multiculturalism is all the things we do to deal with the problems that arise because we have multiple cultures.  Multiculturalism is the set of responses that our government and our society develop to try to address these problems.  Multiculturalism, then, would be things like diversity training for people to learn how not to offend those of other cultures.  It would be rules that allow government documents to be printed in multiple languages.  It is all the things we do to make our multicultural societies work.

So, we can paraphrase Hall and say that multiculturalism is all the things that our government and other parts of our society do to solve the problems that arise because of the fact that we have people from many different cultures within our society.

What is the name of the inheritance pattern in which both alleles are expressed equally?

When we say "expressed equally," this actually raises a lot of questions about the interaction between the genes, their products, and the effects of those products on the organism. Consider, for example, that a gene could have an error or mutation that causes it to never be transcribed properly at all; in this case, we would not consider the two alleles to be equally expressed. However, what if the gene's product is simply broken or inefficient? In this case we could still say that they are being expressed equally, but they will not be equally visible in terms of their effect on the organism. What is usually meant by "equally expressed" is that both alleles code for products that are created in roughly equal proportion and the effects of both can be recognized in the organism, as compared to organisms that are homozygous for one allele or the other. 

There are two terms that describe an equal expression of alleles; incomplete dominance, and codominance. One of the most common demonstrations of these effects is flower pigmentation.

In codominance, we can think of the allele products as working together to make something new; in the case of flowers, the example would be a red allele and a white allele making a pink flower. Note that they probably aren't combining the red and white pigments to create a pink pigment, but that the red and white pigments are equally distributed so that the cumulative effect is pink.

In incomplete dominance, we can think of both alleles as "fighting" for dominance, but neither one wins; instead they each carve out their own territory where they, and they alone, are dominant, but this is not consistent throughout the organism. In the case of the flowers, this would create a flower with red and white splotches, spots or some other distinct pattern effect.

What are some incidents in chapter 25 of To Kill a Mockingbird that thematically relate to the title? How are they are used and why?

The title To Kill a Mockingbird refers to Atticus's dictum in chapter 10 which states:

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird" (90).

The theme revolving around the fact that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird refers to injustices placed on less fortunate or less powerful people at the hands of those who are more powerful. Another way of wording the theme might be that it isn't right to take advantage of other people simply because they are incapable of defending themselves. In chapter 25, the first unfortunate soul is a roly-poly. Scout finds one on the back porch and is about to kill it when Jem tells her not to do it. Jem's reaction is a direct result of witnessing how the town and Mr. Gilmer treated Tom Robinson before, during, and after the trial. Now, Jem sees anything innocent as a victim in need of defending. Scout thinks to herself the following:

"Jem was scowling. It was probably a part of the stage he was going through, and I wished he would hurry up and get through it. He was certainly never cruel to animals, but I had never known his charity to embrace the insect world" (238).

This passage shows that Scout sees a change in Jem's behavior since experiencing the Tom Robinson trial and all of the injustices that came with it. Since Tom Robinson is like a mockingbird in the story, the title and the theme coincide with his trial and with Jem's reaction to it. Scout does ask Jem why she can't smash the bug, and his reply is somewhat like his father's rule about not killing mockingbirds: "Because they don't bother you" (238).

The next incident in chapter 25 that reflects the theme and title is when Dill tells Scout how Helen Robinson took the news of her husband's death. Dill says the following:

"Scout . . . she just fell down in the dirt, like a giant with a big foot just came along and stepped on her . . . Like you'd step on an ant" (240).

The image of a powerful giant stepping on an ant is used to describe how crushed Helen feels at the sad news. Not only that, but if the giant represents society, then Helen is squashed by it because she is then the powerless ant. This image can be directly linked to the theme of mockingbirds as well.

Finally, Mr. Underwood's editorial is described in chapter 25. The references that he makes in his newspaper that also directly relate to the mockingbird theme are as follows:

"Mr. Underwood simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children . . ." (241).

It is clear that the lesson to take home from the book is shown in the title. It is a sin to kill a mockingbird. In other words, it is not right for the powerful to take advantage of the powerless. It is also useless and wrong to kill or hurt someone who doesn't bother anyone else and is innocent.

In Twelve Angry Men, which juror is particularly anxious to make a quick decision?

In Twelve Angry Men, the juror who wishes to hurry the vote is Juror No. 7.

A loud and superficial man, Juror No. 7 is a sarcastic salesman who is quick to form opinions. He is essentially a bully who disguises his cowardliness. No sooner is he inside the jury room than he begins to make quick judgments, saying,

How did you like that business about the knife? Did you ever hear a phonier story?

As the foreman calls the men to order, Juror No. 7 expresses his personal exigency in a flippant tone, saying

This better be fast. I've got tickets to The Seven Year Itch tonight. . . OK, your honor start the show.

When the first vote is called for by the foreman and only Juror No. 8 votes no, Juror 7 immediately questions him, "So what'd you vote not guilty for?" He then becomes somewhat combative with No. 8, who claims he voted in the negative because it is not "so easy" for him to raise his hand and give a boy the death penalty without any discussion. "Who says it's easy for me?" is his retort. When No. 8 calmly responds, "No one," No. 7 responds,

What? just because I voted fast? I think the guy's guilty. You couldn't change my mind if you talked for a hundred years.

Juror No. 7 continues to gripe about wasting time discussing a "kid like that" and complaining, "Some of us've got better things to do than sit around a jury room." When a secret vote is taken among the jurors, No. 7 demands to know who else voted "Not guilty."

When No. 5 later asks to change his vote to "not guilty," No. 7 becomes angry, "Oh, brother!" Further, he tells No. 8, "You sit in here and pull stories out of thin air." He criticizes some of No. 8's perceptive observations, later sarcastically asking, "Why don't we have them run the trial over just so you can get everything straight?"

Juror No. 7 is very critical of others. He ridicules No. 11, an immigrant. When No. 11 later accusing No. 7 of just voting as the majority does and not having "the guts to do what you think is right," No. 7 backs down.

It is not long, however, before he does exactly what No. 11 accuses him of. No. 7 complains he is "sick of this whole thing." He then suggests, "Let's break it up and go home. I'm changing my vote to not guilty. I've had enough." Of course, he is challenged on this opinion by No. 11, who asks him "What kind of a man are you?" No. 7 hesitantly says, "I told you. Not. . . guilty." In Act Three, No. 7 sincerely changes his mind to "Not guilty," making the vote unanimous.

What is meant by entrepôt trade?

Entrepôt trade refers to the practice of re-exporting goods with or without processing or re-packaging them again. This type of trade occurs at duty-free ports, where these goods do not have additional import or export duties, or taxes, placed upon them. These ports were particularly important during the period of mercantilism in the Middle Ages and shortly afterward, when they were used to ship goods between Europe and its colonies and outposts in Asia and the Middle East. In mercantilism, a country's government was still the main regulator of the economy, and certain cities were designated as staple ports (which required merchants to unload their goods from ships at that port and trade them within a few days). Traders often did not want to travel along the entire trade route to sell their goods, so they deposited them in entrepôts. Important entrepôt ports included Amsterdam, Venice, Hong Kong, Macao, and Dubai. 

In Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, what is the most important thing Brian does to survive?

The most important thing that Brian does to survive in Hatchet is develop his mental toughness.

Brian was in a state of panic prior to recognizing the power of mental strength.  He had taken over flying and landing the plane after the pilot suffered a heart attack. The crash landing was in the middle of the wilderness, severely wounding Brian. Hailing from an urban area, Brian had no real idea of what to do.  He found himself struggling for food and shelter, while being victim to animals and natural elements.  All of these realities begin to take a toll on him.  Anxiety settles in, and his survival chances decrease as a result.

Brian has to develop mental strength to confront the challenges that confront him.  Developing this element is the most important thing he does to ensure his survival. One of the first moments where we see this is in Chapter 5.  In the midst of his tension, Brian remembers the instruction of one of his teachers. This helps him establish the mentality needed to survive challenging situations:

Brian had once had an English teacher, a guy named Perpich, who was always talking about being positive, thinking positive, staying on top of things. That's how Perpich had put it—stay positive and stay on top of things. Brian thought of him now—wondered how to stay positive and stay on top of this. All Perpich would say is that I have to get motivated. He was always telling kids to get motivated.

Thinking about Perpich's words triggers the first instance of Brian figuring out how to survive.   Instead of dwelling on all of the things that have gone wrong or everything he does not have, Brian "gets motivated" about what he needs to do.  After thinking about Perpich's teachings, Brian identifies the need for shelter and food, and uses his shirt to keep the "vampires" or mosquitoes off his back. The ending to the chapter shows the value of Perpich's instructions:  "I have to get motivated, he thought, remembering Perpich. Right now I'm all I've got. I have to do something."

When Brian establishes the mental toughness to face down the elements around him, his survival chances increase.  Things begin to fall into place for him.  He gets his first bit of luck when he throws the hatchet against the cave wall, making sparks that allow him to figure out how to create a fire.  From this, Brian figures out how to find food and cook them over the fire.  He enhances his shelter, creating a food shelf and a door to keep out intruders.  Brian develops a toughness that enables him to survive attacks from a moose as well as a tornado.  Brian maximizes his chances for survival by developing mental toughness.  This enables him to endure the natural elements, and invariably triumph over them.

How would you characterize the level of diction in "Araby" by James Joyce? Is this level appropriate for a story about a young boy's experiences?

James Joyce's story "Araby" is told with a very high level of diction. Joyce not only chooses words from a rich vocabulary, but he is often poetic and abstract. For example:

The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.

This might be considered inappropriate diction for a story about a young boy in love; but it must be understood that the narrator is an older man looking back to the days of his youth. The narrator is expressing feelings the boy experienced but would not have been able to express to himself or to anyone else. This is in fact what is so remarkable about the story. We readers understand that the viewpoint character is capable of having deep feelings and capable of subtle observations of the world around him without comprehending them at the time. The mature and sophisticated narrator of the story is able to put these feelings and observations into words because he is so much older and wiser. So, the elevated diction is very appropriate for the way James Joyce chooses to tell this story. If he wanted to appear to be in the immediate present rather than in the remote past, he could have kept only the bare bones of his story; but it would seem like an inconsequential, humorous piece about "puppy love." Everything of importance in "Araby" comes from what the mature narrator puts into the telling.

What insight is offered by Matthew Arnold about how an individual's interactions with nature may help define his or her character in "Dover Beach"?

Arnold lived in the Victorian Age, a time when industrialization and science were undermining traditional religious faith. Published in 1851, "Dover Beach" expresses his concerns about the belief in evolution and the loss of faith in traditional religion. Certainly, his interactions with Nature at the coast of Dover reflect his feelings of uncertainty about the changing world in which he lives.

Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, 

...the lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other.

For the speaker of "Dover Beach" there is such an adjustment, and such a communion of feeling, as expressed in the first stanza:

The sea is calm tonight,...
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay,
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

However, this harmony with Nature is interrupted in the fourth stanza of the poem:

But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating,...

In other words, faith that once encircled the world (a "Sea of Faith") is threatened by the new theories on evolution. Now, the poet, who bemoans this loss of faith, only hears the melancholy sounds of the waves as they leave the world with "naked shingles"; pebbles that no longer represent the beauty of creation.

And we are here as on a darkling plain...
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

For Arnold, who is a poet of his time, theories on evolution have sent shock waves to established and traditional religious beliefs, and these shock waves have disrupted the harmony with Nature in which he has lived. For, now, Arnold feels the human misery that "Sophocles long ago/Heard," as well as the loss of faith. This disruption of nature certainly defines Arnold's despondent nature.

I need help with completing an assignment responding to the following prompt. Human resource management is the process of finding, developing, and...

Your first task here is selecting a position about which to write. Strategically, you should choose an exempt rather than hourly position, perhaps with technical or managerial responsibilities, as that will give you a wider range of issues to discuss. One example of this might be a software engineer.

For the position description, you would need to include a list of the types of software the engineer will be developing, the computer and operating systems with which the engineer would need to be familiar, and other relevant technical qualifications. You might also want to specify whether the position involves travel to customer sites, overtime, or weekend or shift work. Your position description should signal whether this is a high-paced development job on a leading edge of technology or a more routine maintenance position. You should also think about whether you are attempting to attract people to a start-up or an established company.

For recruitment strategies, if you are considering a field where companies are competing for people with valuable skills, you need to go beyond simply posting the position on a few job sites and use social media and professional networking sites to approach individual recruits. You might also work on building partnerships with local universities to create internships so that you can start recruiting potential stars while they are still students. 

For employment laws, equal opportunity laws are important as are rules concerning accommodating disabilities. Given that software is increasingly globalized, you may need to address immigration and visa issues for potential candidates. If your company does government contracts, you may need to look at rules for contractors, including security clearance eligibility and veteran preferences. 

In Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, what are Antony's qualities as a general? How sound are his strategies?

Antony is portrayed as a distracted and rash general whose strategies are unsound. At the beginning of the play, Philo describes Antony's eyes as those "that o’er the files and musters of the war / Have glowed like plated Mars" (I.1.3-4). In other words, Antony used to be like Mars, the god of war, looking over his troops. Now, however, he only pays attention to Cleopatra and neglects his duties as a general. 

Later, Antony shows himself to be arrogant and rash when he decides to attack Octavius by sea, though Octavius has the greater advantage at sea. When Canidius asks Anthony why he has decided to attack by sea, Antony responds, "For that he dares us to ’t" (III.7-29). In other words, Antony insists on attacking by sea, even though he is at a great disadvantage, because Octavius has dared him to do so. Enobarbus warns him, "Your mariners are muleteers, reapers, people / Engrossed by swift impress" (III.7.35-36). This means that the sailors in Antony's forces are mule drivers or farmers by trade, and they were quickly drafted into Antony's forces and are not well trained.

Even though he is far more prepared to fight on land and Enobarbus begs him to do so, Antony refuses and sticks to his idea of fighting by sea. During the sea battle, at the point at which the victory could go to either side, Cleopatra decides to flee with her 60 ships. Antony follows suit, and Scarus says of his actions, "I never saw an action of such shame. / Experience, manhood, honor, ne’er before / Did violate so itself" (III.10.22-24). His men feel that Antony has brought shame upon them and violated their ideas of what it means to act honorably because he has quickly deserted the battle.

However, in the end, Antony, fighting a losing battle, shows himself to be generous when he gives Enobarbus, who has deserted him, back his treasure. He says, "Oh, my fortunes have / Corrupted honest men!" (IV.5.16-17). He blames his own poor performance in battle for convincing his men to become traitors, and, in the end, he shoulders the responsibility for his losses. 

How does sociology help us to better understand how our own society functions?

Sociology helps us better understand how our own society functions by exploring people's and groups' application of principles that govern society's interactions in the areas of communication, social structures (such as the family), economics, decision making and choice, distribution of resources, power structure (including religion and law), distribution of wealth, and ownership of resources. Sociology brings to light how society can best function in conflicts over sharing resources, defining priorities, and reaching agreed-upon goals.

Communication lies at the heart of sociological exploration because communication disseminates facts and the reasons for them to people, feelings between people, and charismatic confidence to people. Communication breaks down in the face of the convincing charisma that overreaches the impact of facts and their reasons. Understanding which forms of communication are most effective in spreading facts and reasons (instead of charisma or other influences) is one way sociology helps us better understand how our own society functions.

Another way among many that sociology helps us better understand the function of our own society is through identifying where people and industry fail to demonstrate the essential principles of such social functions as economics and human behavior, as, for example, in the economic principle that price cannot be held below costs and, in human behavior, that groups tend to shift responsibility from themselves off on to someone else. 

[Drawn from Charles Goodeve, "How Society Works."]

How could I write a extended response to the statement that "Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet explores issues and themes that continue to...

One way to begin to respond to this statement would be to figure out what issues and themes Shakespeare addresses in the play; then, you can assess which of them are still relevant in today's world.  For example, Shakespeare addresses the theme of youthful rebellion with Romeo and Juliet's relationship.  The lovers know that their dalliance would likely be frowned upon by their feuding families, and rather than compel them to abandon their feelings, the idea that such a relationship would be forbidden seems only to add fuel to their passionate fire.  In the garden, Juliet tells Romeo that her family would kill him if they found him there, but he promises that he would rather die by their hands than live a long life without her love.  This is one way in which he shows his devotion to her.  They defy their families when they choose each other.  The idea that teenagers are rebellious is common today as well.  In fact, we now know that it is developmentally appropriate for adolescents to break rules, test boundaries, and defy their parents.  Most children rebel against their parents on some level, and it is as common now as it was then.

However, a theme such as family honor may not be so well known to us.  No one ever says why the Montagues and Capulets feud, but, in the play, the only thing they seem to fight over is family honor: in the first scene, when Tybalt gets angry that Romeo has come to the Capulets' party, etc.  The idea of one's family honor being so terribly important is less common to us today: we don't usually see people getting into deadly fights over a slight to their family honor.  "Yo momma" jokes are even considered a form of wit!

At any rate, try to brainstorm a list of all the issues and themes that Shakespeare takes on in the play and then work through your list to figure out which ones still seem relevant.  Then, you can explore each one (as I've begun to do, above, with rebellion and family honor) and ascertain whether or not it is still of interest to us today.  If it is, describe how, and perhaps provide some examples. 

In Neal Shusterman's Unwind, what are five reasons Connor should not be unwound?

sciftw
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High School Teacher

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(Level 1) Educator Emeritus

Posted on June 23, 2016 at 1:44 PM

What is the theme of "Ripe Figs" by Kate Chopin?

The theme of "Ripe Figs" is that human maturity is related to the seasons of the year, a process that cannot be hastened.

In Kate Chopin's story, the young character Babette wants to go to Bayou LaFourche to visit her cousins, but Maman Nainaine insists that she wait until the figs ripen. Babette, of course, is impatient and watches the green figs each day, hoping that they will soon change their color so that she can depart:

She walked slowly beneath them, carefully peering between gnarled spreading branches.

Each time she comes out, she is dispirited. Finally, Babette comes to Maman Nainaine and shows her a dozen purple figs on a porcelain platter. Maiman Nainaine exclaims that the figs have ripened so early, but Babette insists that they have ripened late. This is the contrast between youth and maturity: the concept of time is different. Hence, the stipulation that Babette wait until the figs mature. For, watching the figs mature may have encouraged patience.

Then, Maman Nainaine takes her knife to the ripened fig, and as she peels it, she tells Babette to give her love to all her cousins. By forcing Babette to pay attention to the maturation of the fig, Maman Nainaine, perhaps, hopes to teach Babette to follow the pattern she has watched and allow time for things to come about.

Is the title is appropriate to the story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"?

The title of James Thurber's short story is, indeed, appropriate.

Walter Mitty is a failure in life, and he attempts to deal with his fears and challenges by retreating into the "secret life" of his imagination. Sadly, however, even in this self-created world of his imagination, Mitty fails until he finds himself facing a firing squad. Nevertheless, the efforts of his imagination to escape the vicissitudes of his world are worthy attempts. For, Mitty imagines himself in prominent and heroic roles in which he can affirm some self-esteem. Unfortunately, his overbearing wife or someone else interrupts him just at the moment of his most valorous acts. Consequently, Mitty's dreams become as ineffectual as his acts in real life. 

For instance, as he waits at the hotel for Mrs. Mitty, Walter hides in a winged chair, losing himself in the "secret life" of his imagination. As usual, in this daydream he is in a position of power: Captain Mitty buckles his gun belt with the Webley-Vickers automatic weapon in its holster as he prepares to leave the dugout to fly a bomber in order to blow up an ammunition dump. But, just as the hero departs, calling out "Cheerio!" there is an annoying tapping on his shoulder that pulls him back into disappointing reality in which his termagant wife scolds him. 
His self-reliance defeated, Mitty's final daydream is of a man facing a firing squad. Now, his "secret life" is revealed as more than just imagination; it is the expression of his repression as a man.

When Nettie tells Samuel and Corinne the entire story about Celie, what shocks Samuel the most?

When Nettie tells Samuel and Corinne the entire story about Celie, the thing that shocks Samuel the most is that Celie's children, Olivia and Adam, are the result of Celie's rape at her own father's hands.

In the beginning of the story, the "Dear God" letters tell us that Celie's father raped her when he couldn't get Celie's mother to have sex with him. Immediately after Olivia and Adam were born, Celie's father took the babies away from Celie. Samuel and Corinne eventually adopted the children, but as time went by, Corinne began to suspect that the children were the product of an affair between Nettie and Samuel.

Nettie tries to reason with Corinne, but to no avail. She points out to Corrine that Corinne has seen the lack of stretch marks on her stomach. Nettie argues that stretch marks are not something that can be wiped out; only women who have ever experienced pregnancies get stretch marks, and she doesn't have any. Nettie also tries to remind Corinne of the time she met Celie in town. She believes that, if Corinne can just remember, she will see how the children actually resemble Celie.

To jolt her memory, Nettie pulls out a quilt that Corinne had made. She asks Corinne whether she remembers buying the cloth for the quilt. With tears in her eyes, Corinne eventually admits that she remembers. She confesses that Olivia had looked so much like Celie that she was afraid. Her fear was that Celie would want her children back. Even though she suspected then that Celie might have been the real mother of the children, Corinne didn't want to face the truth. Instead, she decided to forget about Celie.

Corinne eventually dies after her admission, but not before she tells Samuel and Nettie that she now believes the truth about the children's maternal heritage.

What was the purpose of the Freedmen's Bureau established by Congress in 1865?

Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865. Congress understood that the freed slaves were going to need some assistance. Many slaves had no formal education and had little or no money. The Freedmen’s Bureau was designed to help the former slaves adjust to being free after the Civil War ended.

The Freedmen’s Bureau did many things for the former slaves. It provided the former slaves with items that they needed such as food and clothing. Medical care was also provided. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped the former slaves establish schools so they and/or their children could get an education. This agency also helped them get fair wages. Legal help was available if needed. Finally, it tried to help the former slaves get land that had been abandoned by the Confederate army.

The Freedmen’s Bureau lasted until 1872 when it closed due to a lack of funding as well as pressure from those opposed to Reconstruction.

What does "swelling act" mean in the line, "As happy prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme" in the play Macbeth ?

The "swelling act" is the act of Macbeth's becoming king.

After Macbeth is rewarded by King Duncan and given the title of Thane of Cawdor, he realizes that the first two predictions of the witches have come true. He has been Thane of Glamis, then is made Thane of Cawdor. Now, he is tempted by the idea that the third prediction, this "swelling act" of being "King hereafter":

Two truths are told,

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme. (1.3.130-133)

As he imagines himself becoming King of Scotland, Macbeth starts to have murderous thoughts about King Duncan, ideas about the "swelling act" of being king himself. Further, Macbeth considers how his thoughts disturb him so much that he begins to wonder who he really is now. Macbeth worries that he is consumed by his speculations because he finds himself thinking about things that do not yet exist and how he can contribute to bringing them about. A man of action, Macbeth marvels at how he now is consumed by matters that are not real, but only speculative: "And nothing is but what is not" (1.3.145). Here again, appearance and reality are confused.

 

Why is the drinking age requirement 21?

The National Minimum Drinking Age Act was signed into law in July 1984 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. The law dictated that any state that did not set the age of 21 as the minimum drinking age would lose as much as 10 percent of its federal highway funding. 

However, before this law was signed, years of debates and discussions occurred regarding what an appropriate drinking age should be. Studies found that teenage brains were less likely to be able to handle alcohol consumption without becoming impaired. The thought was that by raising the drinking age, the number of teens drinking and driving would decrease. Before the minimum age drinking law was passed, the most common age group arrested for drunk driving were those between the ages of 16 and 20.

In addition to the scientific conclusions that 21 might be the best minimum drinking age for reducing accidents, there are also historical precedents regarding the age of 21 being akin to the age one reaches adulthood. Centuries ago in England, 21 was the age when one could vote or become a knight.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has been one of the key proponents in keeping the minimum drinking age at 21. The organization points to a National Traffic Highway Administration report that concludes that the raised drinking age saves roughly 900 lives per year. Since 1982—just before the minimum age law was signed—there has been a more than 60 percent decrease in the number of fatalities in alcohol-related crashes among teens.

Some argue that the drinking age of 21 was never fully thought through and that it should be lowered again. The American Psychological Association asserts that adolescence concludes at about age 19, but maturity is based on an individual's circumstances.  

Some have suggested that if teens complete a 40-hour training course about the risks of consuming alcohol, they should be allowed to drink before reaching age 21. But opponents argue that the health risks for teens and for those with whom they would come into contact would remain.

`y = ln(x)/x` Locate any relative extrema and points of inflection.

Locate extrema and inflection points for `y=(ln(x))/x ` :

The domain is x>0.

Extrema can only occur at critical points, or points where the first derivative is zero or fails to exist.

`y=1/x*ln(x) `

`y'=1/x*(1/x)+(-1/x^2)lnx `

`y'=1/x^2(1-lnx) `

Setting equal to zero we get:

`1/x^2=(lnx)/x^2 ==> lnx=1 ==> x=e `

For 0<x<e the first derivative is positive and for x>e it is negative, so there is a maximum at x=e and this is the only extrema.

Inflection points can only occur if the second derivative is zero:

`y''=-2/(x^3)(1-lnx)+1/x^2(-1/x) `

`y''=-1/x^3(2-2lnx+1)=-1/x^3(3-2lnx) `

So `3-2lnx=0==> lnx=3/2 ==> x=e^(3/2)~~4.482 `

There is an inflection point at ` x=e^(1.5)`  where the graph changes from concave down to concave up.

The graph:

In "Self-Reliance," how does society affect what people value?

Emerson believes that society affects what people value because it removes the individual's uniqueness by encouraging conformity. 

In "Self-Reliance," Emerson argues that society wants people to conform.  Emerson believes this social pressure must be challenged because it affects what we value.  In our desire to conform, or to be like everyone else, Emerson believes that we end up valuing what everyone else values.  In emphasizing a socially conditioned set of values, the individual loses part of their voice.  Emerson goes as far as saying that conformity makes human beings engage in a form of deceitful behavior:

This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

Conformity affects our values because we end up emphasizing ideas that are not our own. This is why Emerson feels that conformity makes us "false" and "not quite true." 

Emerson believes that conforming to social standards affects what people value because we embrace the lowest common denominator.  We no longer place primacy on our own uniqueness when we conform.  We end up valuing "the hobgoblin of little minds."  Our chance of being "a great soul" is thwarted.  Emerson believes that we become lesser when we see ourselves through society's eyes. When we embrace conformity, society has affected what we value.  

As a result, Emerson believes that "genius" is when we reject conformist notions of the good:  "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.’’  For Emerson, the truly educated individual understands that rejection of what society values is the differentiation point between living for oneself and living for others:

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. 

Emerson feels that to be great means that we value our own identity and thoughts.  To do this means to move away from conformity.  It means   pushing back against the pressure of what society values and valorize our own voice.  

How is snobbery portrayed in the short story "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield?

Snobbery is depicted in Mansfield's "The Doll's House" with the social stratification described in the narrative and with the spoken words and actions of the Burnells.

After "dear old Mrs. Hay" has stayed with the Burnells, she sends the prettiest and most interesting doll's house to the three Burnell girls. They are so excited about owning this extravagant doll's house that they ask to be able to show it to some of the other girls at school.

The snobbery of the Burnells is exemplified in the planning of the viewing and the arrangement of the girls who will be allowed to view the doll's house: 

• The oldest Burnell girl named Isabel declares that she is the one who will select who is allowed to come and view the toy house. 


• The girls will not be allowed to stay for tea or go through the Burnell house.


• They must stand quietly in the designated courtyard while Isabel points out the salient features of the doll's house.


• The girls form a "ring" around Isabel as she "held a court" in the playground.


• Isabel chooses two girls who can return in the afternoon to see the house (perhaps at tea time). 

Outside this ring, "always outside" the ring of girls, are the two Kelvey sisters, whose mother is a washerwoman and their father "a jailbird." In fact, the Burnell girls are not allowed to even talk to the Kelvey girls. But, the Kelvey girls stand and listen, anyway. 

When Kezia decides to show the Kelvey sisters the doll's house, Lil Kelvey gasps, "Your ma told our ma you wasn't to speak to us." But, the smaller girl, Our Else, pulls on her sister's skirt until she follows Kezia. Then they hear "Kezia!" called out by Aunt Beryl.

"How dare you ask the little Kelveys into our courtyard?....You know as well as I do, you're not allowed to talk to them. Run away, children, run away at once. And don't come back again," said Aunt Beryl, staring as if she could not believe what she saw.

Clearly, there is an unbridgeable gap between the social classes in Katherine Mansfield's story.

According to the narrator of "Dusk," who does the dusk hour belong to?

Dusk is defined as the darkest period of twilight. According to the narrator of Saki's story "Dusk," the time was about six-thirty in early March. At that time of day and at that time of the year it would be getting quite dark in a northern place like London. The narrator devotes a whole paragraph to describing the people who haunt the park at that hour, as viewed by Norman Gortsby.

Dusk, to his mind, was the hour of the defeated. Men and women, who had fought and lost, who hid their fallen fortunes and dead hopes as far as possible from the scrutiny of the curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming, when their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and unhappy eyes might pass unnoticed, or, at any rate, unrecognised.

Gortsby himself identifies with these people.

He was in the mood to count himself among the defeated. Money troubles did not press on him; had he so wished he could have strolled into the thoroughfares of light and noise, and taken his place among the jostling ranks of those who enjoyed prosperity or struggled for it. He had failed in a more subtle ambition, and for the moment he was heartsore and disillusioned, and not disinclined to take a certain cynical pleasure in observing and labelling his fellow wanderers as they went their ways in the dark stretches between the lamp-lights.

The young man who sits on the bench beside Gortsby stands out in contrast to all the others in the park. He presents himself as a country gentleman who has plenty of money but is temporarily financially embarrassed because he left almost all of it in his hotel room and now can't find his hotel. His story is intended to make Gortsby believe that he might be able to make a friend of a man who is of a superior social class, because the young grifter tells him he doesn't know a soul in London. These words from his hard-luck story have been carefully crafted.

"There's a nice predicament for a fellow who hasn't any friends or connections in London!"

Obviously, he would be deeply grateful if Gortsby could lend him a little money. He might show his appreciation by inviting Gortsby to dinner when he found his hotel, and he might even invite him down to his parents' estate for shooting or riding. All of this is implied, not stated.

Gortsby is cynical. But when he finds the cake of soap on the ground near the bench, he goes rushing after the hustler and apologetically offers him the loan of a sovereign to get him through the night at a different hotel.

The point of Saki's story is that many people seem glad to lend a hand to those above them on the social ladder but reluctant to help those who are really in dire need. This truth is illustrated in Mark Twain's story "The Million Pound Bank Note" and in "The Umbrella Man" by Roald Dahl.

How can I write a five-hundred-word essay describing a bad situation or problem in my community that has had an impact on me personally?

Only you know about a bad situation or problem in your community because it is your community.  But I can offer some possibilities and give you some help on how to write your essay. 

Two particularly bad problems in communities are drugs and crime.  Two others that come to mind are unemployment and poverty.  Still another is the homeless, who seem to be in so many communities today.  Environmental damage might be a problem in your neighborhood, too.  These are serious problems, and your assignment sounds as though you are meant to address a fairly serious problem, not a problem such as litter or not enough trees in the park.  Do any of these problems exist in your community?  You could choose one of these, or use the list to get you thinking about some other problems you have noticed. 

As far as I can tell, this assignment seems to be a kind of hybrid of a problem/solution essay and a cause and effect essay.  You are expected to state the problem and discuss its causes.  I do think, though, that in order to give your writing some purpose, it might be good to focus at least a bit on a solution or solutions. You might do that as you discuss the causes, paragraph by paragraph, explaining to the reader how to address each of them. 

Now, your introduction needs to explain the problem and also include a thesis sentence.  Your thesis sentence can be a cause and effect kind of statement, naming the effect, the problem, and the causes of the problem, which will be your supporting points.  Let me give you an example of what I mean.  If I were writing an essay about a problem in my community--the homeless people I see from time to time--I could have a thesis statement like this:

The problem of homelessness in my neighborhood needs to be addressed by attacking its causes: poverty, mental illness, and a shortage of housing.  

I can end my introduction with that thesis statement, and that helps me to structure my body paragraphs, the first on how to address the poverty, the second on how to address the mental illness, and the third on how to address the housing shortage.  Notice that my body paragraphs will be in the exact same order in which they appeared in the thesis statement.

For each of these body paragraphs, you need to write a topic sentence that lets the reader know which cause you are focusing on. Then you can go on to develop the paragraph with evidence to show the causes (and a possible solution) to your reader.  The evidence might be some statistics or it could even be anecdotal, but you must provide some evidence of some kind to make the point you want to make.

Finally, you will need to write a conclusion in a separate paragraph. In a conclusion, you should remind your reader what the problem is, what the causes are, and possibly exhort your reader to help solve the problem.

It is good to take an interest in the problems of one's community. If we don't, we are not acting as good members of society. 

What are some of the problems you see in prosecuting cyber-crime or -terrorism cases? Where, exactly, is "cyberspace?" How does a detective with...

The legal definition of cyber space is the same as the internet, according to Duhaime's Law Dictionary. Cyber space is a decentralized communications network. According to the Department of Justice document Prosecuting Computer Crimes (see the link below), the jurisdiction of a cyber crime is often determined to be at the federal level because it involves interstate commerce. As the report states, 

In the context of computer crime, the inexorable connection between the Internet and interstate commerce may sometimes be sufficient to satisfy the jurisdictional element of the statute at issue.

This means that if a detective uncovers a cyber crime or cyber terrorism, the case might have to be handed over to a federal entity, such as the FBI. Usually, if a computer used in the crime connects to the internet, that is sufficient grounds to substantiate that the case has interstate connections. In addition, the Patriot Act stated that acts that would constitute crimes in the jurisdiction of the U.S. can be prosecuted even if they are committed in foreign countries. That means prosecuting cyber crimes is not just like lassoing a cloud, as there are rules about jurisdiction that apply to these crimes.

Different states have different laws regarding cyber crime. For more information, see the state laws link below. Most state laws prohibit computer crimes, and different states require intentionality, meaning the crime is committed by intent. For example, in Massachusetts, computer crimes must be committed by intent. While states differ with regard to laws about cyber crimes, these crimes can be prosecuted under several different state laws or federal laws. Therefore, even if an act is not a crime in the state in which it was committed, it can be prosecuted in another state if the act is a crime in that state, or it may be prosecuted under federal law. Examples of cyber crimes include identity theft and hacking. 

With regard to prosecuting these cases, the defendant generally must be tried in the state and district where the crime was committed. Still, even the Department of Justice report states, "applying the principles of venue to network crimes is not always a straightforward endeavor" (page 117). This is the problem in prosecuting cyber crime. The critical way to determine venue is to figure out where the crime was committed. For example, the report gives the example of a cyber crime case that began in California and used a router based in Arizona to break into a network in Illinois to get information in Kentucky. In this case, the prosecution could use the endpoints—California and Kentucky—or the states in the middle, as the venue for prosecuting the case, as venue can be “in any district in which [a continuing] offense was begun, continued, or completed" (page 118). To make a case for the venue being where the information passed through, the prosecutors should determine if the communications formed the offense. These are some of the considerations that go into determining if a specific detective has jurisdiction over a case.

What is the role of the handicapper general in the story "Harrison Bergeron"?

In Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," the Handicapper General is a woman whose name is Diana Moon Glampers.  Her role is to enforce the Constitutional amendments that provide for the equalization of all American citizens and any laws or regulations created pursuant to those provisions. In the story, equality is meant not to level the playing field so that all have equal opportunity and treatment, but to handicap people so that there is a lowest common denominator amongst all the people, with talent, beauty, creativity, and intelligence repressed in those who might rise or excel.  So, for example, ballerinas are weighted down, literally unable to rise, and people of intelligence, such as George, are forced to wear radio transmitters that interfere with their thought processes.  Glampers has agents everywhere to assess what kinds of handicaps people need to keep them down and to enforce the use of these handicaps.  In the penultimate scene in the story, Glampers herself makes a personal appearance when George and Hazel's son, Harrison, an "underhandicapped" person who has escaped from jail, appears on the set of a show in which weighted-down ballerinas are dancing.  He seeks to overthrow this government of "equality," and after he selects a beautiful ballerina to dance with him, he and she are gunned down by the Handicapper General.  Vonnegut's story is meant, I think, to be a cautionary tale about not confusing equal opportunity and treatment with a blindly literal application of the concept of equality that hobbles individuals who have a great deal to contribute to society. 

Were the Reform Movements of the 1840s successful ?

The answer here depends on which specific reform movements you are interested in, the country to which you are referring, and what you mean by successful. There were reform movements in this period in both Britain and the United States. Some were geared towards widening the right to vote in the direction of universal suffrage. Others were focused on other aspects of election reform. In Britain, many rotten and pocket boroughs had been eliminated in the 1832 Reform Bill but cities were still under-represented and rural areas over-represented.

In the United States, many different reform movements aimed towards improving quality of life. Two notable ones were the abolitionist movement which aimed to abolish slavery and the temperance movement which aimed to reduce or eliminate the consumption of alcohol. Activists were also concerned with animal rights, human rights, labor conditions, treatment of minorities, and other measures affecting the poor and destitute. 

Many of the goals of the reformers in both countries were eventually completely or partly achieved. Both nations have universal suffrage, slavery has been abolished, labor laws have been amended, and many laws exist forbidding human and animal abuse of the kinds that were prevalent in the nineteenth century. While not all of the goals of these reform movements have been completely attained, they should be judged successful in so far as they did lead to many positive social changes. 

Vitamins are necessary, and are required to perform a variety of life-giving functions. It must be remembered that vitamins can only perform...

It really sounds like this question is asking for confirmation about the importance of vitamins.  Yes, vitamins are important for overall physical health.  The reasons that are stated above are correct, but I would like to clarify the second bullet a bit.  It is true that your body needs vitamins in small amounts, but there are two broad categories of vitamins that will affect a person's intake of certain vitamins.  Some vitamins are fat soluble and some are water soluble.  In simple terms, if your body takes in more fat soluble vitamins than necessary, the body will store the excess vitamins in fat tissue.  Water soluble vitamins are not stored by the body.  They are used by the body.  Excess water soluble vitamins will be filtered out of the body.  There is a danger with consuming too much fat soluble vitamin content.  Because the body stores those vitamins, a massive build up can actually lead to toxicity within the body. So while vitamins are important to overall health, their intake needs to be balanced in the same way that a healthy diet is balanced.  

What are some similarities between current American society and ancient Greece with respect to art, architecture, and politics?

Much of western civilization developed from ancient Graeco-Roman traditions. Thus, the similarities one finds between elements of contemporary North American culture and ancient Greek culture are actually the result of direct influence. 

First, the notion of democracy originated in ancient Athens. Although the United States is technically a republic (or "representative democracy") rather than a direct democracy, many elements of contemporary government, including trial by jury, derive from ancient models.

In architecture, many buildings follow neoclassical models using elements such as columns of the three classical orders (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian). The style known as "Federal architecture" is based on classical Greek models and can be seen in many iconic buildings such as the Lincoln Memorial, the National Gallery, and the American Museum of Natural History.

Another similarity to ancient Greece is the notion of public art as a form of civic pride. Just as Pericles engaged in a massive public works program to glorify Athens, so we now have requirements that a small percentage of the budget for public buildings be set aside for art. 

In art, many of the techniques for portraying the human body, such as the S curve body shape, first appeared in Greek sculpture. The lost-wax casting process used by many Greek sculptors is still used in modern art. 

What is a vacuole?

A vacuole is an organelle commonly found in plant cells and some animal cells. It is a typical feature of eukaryotic cells. A vacuole is a membrane bound organelle and can be a major component of a plant cell. There is (generally) one very large vacuole in a plant cell. In comparison, animal cells may contain a number of smaller vacuoles. 

Vacuoles serve a number of purposes in a eukaryotic cell. They can be used for the storage of nutrients, minerals, proteins, etc. for later use by the cell. Vacuoles can also be used for storage of waste materials that are not required or are harmful to the cell. These materials are then discarded from the cell. One key function of vacuoles in plant cells is structural support. The central vacuole can take up as much as 90% of the cell volume, providing structural support.

Hope this helps.  

In O. Henry's short story "A Retrieved Reformation," why did Jimmy Valentine stop burglaries?

Jimmy Valentine decided to give up his life of crime because he falls in love with a beautiful, small-town girl named Annabel Adams. He knows such a perfect girl will not return his love if she knows how he makes his living. 

As the story opens, Jimmy is serving time in prison for one of his latest safecracking jobs. 

He had been sent to prison to stay for four years. He had been there for ten months. But he had expected to stay only three months. Jimmy Valentine had many friends outside the prison. A man with so many friends does not expect to stay in prison long.

Jimmy hardly listens to the warden when he receives the pardon the governor signed reluctantly.

“Valentine,” said the chief prison officer, “you’ll go out tomorrow morning. This is your chance. Make a man of yourself. You’re not a bad fellow at heart. Stop breaking safes open, and live a better life.”

Jimmy's friends find it increasingly difficult to help him, as he learns from one friend.

Jimmy begins to sense his career of crime isn't as easy or lucrative as he thought it would be. Ben Price, the bank detective, is always on his trail. He is building a prison record. He is getting older. He is becoming notorious as the best safecracker in the business. It looks as though it will become easier and easier for Jimmy to be sent to prison and harder and harder for him to get out. He is in danger of becoming an incorrigible recidivist and growing old behind bars.

Jimmy decides to move out of his usual area of operations in Indiana and setting up a "front" as owner and operator of a shoe business in far-away Elmore, Arkansas. That is where he falls in love.

A young lady walked across the street, passed him at the corner, and entered a door. Over the door was the sign, “The Elmore Bank.” Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgetting at once what he was. He became another man.

Annabel is an inspiration. She falls in love with Jimmy, too, and he wants to be worthy of her love. Annabel symbolizes everything that has been missing in Jimmy's criminal life. She is the catalyst for his reformation. She is meant to symbolize everything a man can obtain by living a moral life and what he is missing by committing crimes.

In N. Scott Momaday's book The Way to Rainy Mountain, what is an example of the way in which Momaday adapts history so that it makes sense in a...

In the Prologue, Momaday tells the story of the Kiowa's last Sun Dance in 1887. He tells this story through the eyes of his grandmother, who was then seven, to make it more accessible to the reader. He also relates the last time the Kiowa came together to commemorate the Sun Dance, even though they did not have a buffalo, as was their tradition. Instead, they hung a hide from a tree as a remembrance of the buffalo, and soldiers came from Fort Sill to disrupt the Kiowas' ritual. Momaday writes:

"Forbidden without cause the essential act of their faith, having seen the wild herds slaughtered and left to rot upon the ground, the Kiowas backed away forever from the medicine tree...My grandmother was there. Without bitterness, and for as long as she lived, she bore a vision of deicide" (page 2).

In other words, the Kiowas at this ceremony witnessed the death of their gods, or "deicide," and they no longer could observe their rituals in the way they wanted to. The means by which they could find the sacred in life was gone forever. The way in which Momaday relates his grandmother's sadness about the destruction she and her people witnessed is to show her praying. He observes her praying when he is young. Though he does not understand Kiowa, he understands that "there was something inherently sad in the sound, some merest hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow" (page 2). By relating the images and sounds of his grandmother praying, he is able to relate how the history of the Kiowa affected her and to make the history of the tribe more accessible to the reader.

How would you describe Margrit Balicki in The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier?

In the book, Margrit Balicki is Joseph Balicki's wife. Joseph is the principal of a school in Warsaw. Margrit is the mother of Ruth, Edek, and Bronia.

In the narrative, Margrit Balicki is a loving mother and a courageous woman. When the Nazi soldiers forcibly enter the Balicki home, Margrit is the only one taken away. The text tells us that both Edek and his sisters' bedrooms were locked from the outside. So, neither Edek nor his sisters could come out of their bedrooms while the soldiers were in the house. Although it is never made clear, the implication is that Margrit had locked her children's doors. This is why she was the only one taken away by the soldiers.

The author does not tell us why the soldiers never bothered to break down the doors, as Edek later did with a rifle (to let himself and his sisters out of their bedrooms). However, it is clear that Margrit did what she could to protect her children. Her courage saved her children from being captured.

At the end of the story, we are told that Margrit takes to Jan warmly; presumably an orphan, Jan finds a loving mother in Margrit, who "loved him as much as she loved her own children." So, Margrit can be described as both a loving mother and a courageous woman.

In the novel The Kite Runner, why did the author have Assef, Sohrab, and Amir all come together later on in the story?

At the beginning of the novel, Assef challenges both Amir and Hassan on their way to climb a tree. Hassan ends up saving himself and Amir by pointing his slingshot at Assef and threatening him. Assef, disappointed at the fact that Hassan is armed says, "This doesn't end today, believe me...This isn't the end for you either, Amir. Someday, I'll make you face me one on one" (Hosseini 35). Shortly following their controversial interaction with Assef, Assef corners Hassan at the end of a kite-fighting tournament and rapes him while Amir watches at a safe distance. Amir is plagued with guilt for the majority of the novel until he is given a chance at redemption.

Later on in the novel, Amir is older and embarks on a mission to save Sohrab, who is essentially a sex slave to Assef. Sohrab, Hassan's son, is very similar to his father and Amir has to fight Assef one on one in order to leave with Sohrab. Khaled Hosseini chose to bring Assef, Sohrab, and Amir together in Chapter 22 in order to emphasize Amir's chance at redemption while creating a circular narrative. In dramatic fashion, Amir conquers his fear of Assef by fighting him behind closed doors in front of Sohrab and gains redemption by doing so. Sohrab, who represents Hassan, saves Amir by shooting Assef's eye out using his slingshot. The way in which Sohrab saves Amir resembles the way Hassan protected Amir in his youth. Hosseini ties together two significant scenes by having essentially the same characters, engage in similar confrontation.

How does Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice display a mood of melancholy, anxiety, and suspense?

In Act 1, Scene 2 of The Merchant of Venice, Portia and Nerissa discuss the various suitors which have traveled to Belmont and attempted to marry Portia. Portia begins the scene by lamenting the fact that she essentially has no say in who she will marry because of her father's will. Portia tells Nerissa that it is unfair and says that she is weary of the world. Portia's hopeless comments depict her melancholy attitude. Nerissa then lists the names of the suitors which have already visited Belmont and Portia negatively describes each of them. Portia displays her anxiety to find a favorable suitor and fears that she will die a virgin if no suitor is able to woo her according to her father's will. At the end of the scene, one of Portia's servants says that a messenger has arrived on the behalf of the Prince of Morocco. The audience is left with a feeling of suspense because they do not know whether or not the Prince of Morocco will be a favorable suitor or upset Portia like the others have.

What is the climax of Roman Fever?

The climax of "Roman Fever" comes as the two matrons sit watching the Roman sunset, recalling events of their first visit to Rome so long ago, and both friends reveal truths that shock the other.

While the two matrons watch their daughters depart, old jealousies are awakened as Alida Slade feels that Grace Ansley likes the two girls to accompany each other all the time because her lackluster daughter Jenny acts as a foil to Alida's vivacious and charming Barbara.

Once alone in the historic spot where an old jealousy was thought to have been resolved, in the climax, Alida Slade boasts that she caused Grace to contract the Roman fever by tricking Grace into going to the forum with a forged letter from Delphin Slade, who later became her husband. Grace issues the real coupe de grace, however, by informing Alida that she responded to the letter, and Delphin did, in fact, meet her. "I didn't have to wait that night."

This climax of their old animosity reaches its resolution as the ladies rise to return to the hotel and Mrs. Ansley tells Mrs. Slade that she feels sorry for her because she did not have to wait, after all, that night so long ago. Mrs. Slade asks why she would feel sorry for her when she married Delphin and had everything--

....I had him for twenty-five years. And you had nothing but that one letter that he didn't write."
...."I had Barbara," she [Grace] said, and began to move ahead of Mrs. Slade toward the doorway. ("Roman Fever")

Having had the final word, Mrs. Ansley now walks ahead of Mrs. Slade.

In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, what veils Mr.Wilson's dark suit and pale hair?

George Wilson lives in the area known as the valley of ashes, located between West Egg and New York City.  Here, it seems as though everything is coated with a thick layer of this ash: the landscape, the cars, the buildings, and even the people.  Wilson is no exception.  He, too, is covered with ash.  In Chapter II, Nick Carraway, the narrator, says, "A white ashen dust veiled [Wilson's] dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity -- except his wife."  The ash appears to render him even paler and more inconsequential than he already seems to be.  While his wife, Myrtle, is vivacious and somehow colorfully alive, George seems spiritless, and Nick even describes him as "anemic" at one point.  It is a rather sad existence that George leads: he is manipulated by Tom Buchanan and deceived by his own wife, and all he wants to do is get ahead, try to achieve even a small piece of the American Dream.  The ashes that cover over his person seem to foreshadow, even in the beginning of the novel, that both George and his dream cannot survive.