Why did the warden call Stanley a 'caveman' in Holes by Louis Sachar?

The warden called Stanley by his nickname, Caveman.

All of the boys are called by nicknames instead of their real names at Camp Green Lake.  The warden is less interested in the boys’ development than finding buried treasure.  When the warden addresses Stanley by his nickname, which the boys have given him, she is catering to the boys in a way.  She wants them to find her treasure.

Stanley does not even realize that he is Caveman at first.  He is one of the bigger boys.

"The Caveman's one tough dude," said Squid, and he lightly punched Stanley's arm.

Stanley leaned back against the torn vinyl upholstery. Despite his shower, his body still radiated heat. "I wasn't trying to start anything," he said. (Ch. 9) 

He says he doesn’t want to get into a fight with Caveman, because Caveman is kind of a scary nickname.  It isn’t until he realizes that the boys are talking to him and calling him Caveman that he understands that is his nickname.  It sounds tougher than Stanley. 

Stanley decides he likes his nickname.  Having a nickname means that he is one of the guys. It isn’t even that bad of a nickname like Barf Bag.  The nickname means "they accepted him as a member of the group."

When Stanley finally meets the warden, everything about her surprises him.  First of all, he had no idea she was a woman.  She is also meaner to the counselors than the boys, and seems to be more interested in treasure than character-building. 

The Warden turned to Stanley. "Caveman, will you come here, please?"

Stanley was surprised she knew his name. He had never seen her. Until she stepped out of the truck, he didn't even know the Warden was a woman. (Ch. 13) 

When the Warden calls him over to fill his canteen with water, she is making a point to Mr. Pendanski.  This is one of the reasons she used his nickname.  She was being sweet to the boy and mean to Mr. Pendanski.  He contradicted her when he said that he had just filled the canteens, and she did not like being contradicted.  Stanley found the whole incident unsettling.

What kind of pet did Jesusa take in?

In the novel, Jesusa took in a coyote.

As a revolutionary soldadera, Jesusa fought side by side with her young husband, Pedro Aguilar. Her job was to load her husband's Mauser and hers as well, so that he would never be without ammunition during battle.

On one occasion, General Juan Espinosa Y Cordoba gave his soldiers the order to set up camp in the San Antonio Arenales sierra region. It was while the soldiers were hunting for wood to build fires with and Pedro was looking for branches to fashion a small makeshift house with, that everyone caught sight of a coyote. The animal was so small that many of the soldiers called her a puppy. She was an extremely trusting animal and did not shy away from human contact.

Jesusa took in the coyote as her personal pet and fed the coyote atole, a beverage made from corn masa flour. Jesusa asserted that the coyote got very attached to her and wouldn't let anyone get near her; at night, the coyote slept on her legs and kept her warm. One day, however, tragedy befell the coyote when the colonel grabbed Jesusa's arm. Although it wasn't quite clear why he did so (perhaps he did not appreciate Jesusa playing the assembly bugle in Pedro's place), Jesusa blamed this act for the death of her beloved pet; for his part, the colonel claimed that he shot the coyote in self-defense.

She accused the colonel of cruelty and maintained that the coyote was only trying to protect her. Frustrated by her accusations, the colonel offered to pay a hundred pesos as compensation for the animal's death. Meanwhile, grieved beyond measure, Jesusa ignored the colonel's offer and instead demanded the restoration of her pet to her. The colonel, genuinely puzzled by Jesusa's unreasonable demand, ignored her and walked away.

Jesusa was left to grieve for her beloved pet alone. She maintained that she often dreamed of the coyote after its death because she missed it so much. To assuage her grief, she then raised two piglets and took to caring for a sow and a dog. She named the dog Jazmin; he was a great comfort to Jesusa after the coyote's death. When Jazmin died, and it looked like the sow would die too, Jesusa begged her husband to give the sow away. So, Pedro sold the sow to a merchant from Piedras Negras. Shortly after this, Pedro was killed in battle, and Jesusa lost all desire to have pets in her life.

In the novel Night, discuss how Elie Wiesel is a different person from when he entered the concentration camps to when he left them.

At the beginning of the novel, Eliezer is a very religious young boy with dreams of one day learning Jewish mysticism known as Cabala. He enjoys his carefree life in Sighet where his father is a respected man, and Eliezer gets to spend his days studying the Torah and the Talmud. After the Germans occupy Hungary, Eliezer and his family are sent to various ghettos and concentration camps where they are separated from each other. In the concentration camps, Eliezer suffers malnutrition, both physical and psychological abuse, and lives in constant fear of being murdered by the Nazi soldiers. Eliezer's body endures extreme conditions as he is forced to march for miles in freezing snowstorms. The constant hunger and dire conditions force Eliezer to focus on his survival. At times, Eliezer even neglects the needs of his father in order to focus on his personal well-being. After witnessing such atrocities and surviving inhumane conditions, Eliezer is forever scarred with the traumatic images of dead bodies and grotesque living conditions. Eliezer loses his faith and does not believe that God exists. He cannot seem to understand why a benevolent God would allow such horrible acts of violence to happen. Eliezer no longer is a carefree young boy with a happy family. After losing the members of his family to Hitler's Final Solution, Eliezer is a broken individual with a negative view of humanity.

The sleepwalking scene is one of the most memorable in drama. Relate this scene to the play overall and examine what makes Lady Macbeth's evolution...

In terms of the overall play, Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene helps us to see even more clearly the tragic hero, Macbeth's, trajectory as a character.  She serves as a foil to him, helping to illuminate his progress from a relatively nice guy to a depraved and ruthless tyrant.  In the beginning, Lady Macbeth prays to be as ruthless as possible, to be drained of any remorse or compassion she might feel; at the same time, she believes that Macbeth is "too full o' th' milk of human kindness" to do anything unscrupulous in order to gain the throne.  She plans the murder of Duncan and then chastises Macbeth for dwelling on what they'd done. 

However, by the time she sleepwalks, Macbeth has devolved into a despicable human being, ordering the murders of former friends, and innocent women and children.  Ironically, Lady Macbeth's conscience can no longer support the role she has played in his change or bear up under the weight of her own terrible guilt.  Though she believed him too good and hoped to steel herself to be capable of real evil, it turns out that he was the one who was truly capable of evil and she is the one with more fundamental "goodness" than he (if we can use her guilt as evidence of her goodness).  The sleepwalking scene is Lady Macbeth's last and completes her work as Macbeth's foil, to help us further understand the extent to which he has fallen, and it also provides a great deal of irony and tension, leading up to the climax of the play.

Her evolution is incredibly provoking because Lady Macbeth had seemed to be sure, initially, that she was capable of terrible things.  She turns out to be the more scrupulous of the two, which is pretty unexpected given the way things began.

Using an illustration, discuss the relationship between work, leisure, recreation and tourism.

Work and tourism are relatively simple to define. Work is what you do because you have to (or you're supposed to), instead of because you want to. Tourism is the practice of traveling to other places for enjoyment.

The difference between leisure and recreation is subtler. Leisure is the free time you have, recreation is what you do for fun during that free time. Leisure also includes rest, where recreation is inherently active.

How are all these concepts connected?

Tourism is a form of recreation which occurs during leisure; but it also requires someone else to do a great deal of work. When you travel to visit another country, there are people working to provide the transportation, people working to serve you food, and people working to maintain your lodgings---not to mention anyone who worked to produce souvenirs or whatever sights you've come to see.

This becomes important when we realize that, with rare exceptions, one person's recreation almost always requires another person's work. For me to vacation in Paris, someone else has to fly the plane, maintain the hotel, drive the taxi. I repay this by doing my own work, which benefits others and may help them have leisure. Work is effectively the price we pay for leisure.

In the novel of Lord of the Flies, how would the book's events be different if the characters were comprised of one grown-up and the rest children?

I believe that by "children" you mean that the characters are exactly the same as before.  The only difference is that there is now a single adult among the group.  

This is a completely open question.  It's up to you to explain what you think and why.  

For me, the question is almost too wide open to give a prediction.  What kind of adult are we talking about?  If the adult is a natural leader that happens to be a male, then I think that he steps into the leadership role and all of the boys follow his lead.  I do not think that the chaos ensues that Golding wrote about, because I don't feel that characters like Jack would have the brazen confidence to disregard social norms.  The adult is a feared authority figure.  

On the other hand, if the adult is a female, I feel that the chaos might still happen.  I have nothing against women, but it definitely takes a strong lady to control a group comprised of all teenage boys.  I had a colleague one year that had an eighth grade history class made up of 23 boys.  There were no girls.  This colleague of mine was a very good teacher, and well respected across multiple classes and ages; however, she would frequently comment on how her all boy history class was the toughest class that she ever had to teach. An adult female on the island might have very little impact on the events of the story. 

Who is more of a villain: Luke O'Neil in The Thorn Birds or Rasheed in A Thousand Splendid Suns?

While neither of these men have much to recommend them, I would argue Rasheed is the more villainous of the two.

Although Luke O'Neill takes undue advantage of his wife, Meggie, he never strikes her. On the other hand, Rasheed physically assaults both his wives, Mariam and Laila, without compunction when he wants to get his way. A commonality between the two men is that both believe in the thorough infallibility and authority of the husband; yet, only one (Rasheed) believes in his right to physically terrorize his wives to the ultimate end (death), if necessary. True, Rasheed crudely forces himself on Mariam and Luke does the same with Meggie (both men make the first act of consummation extremely painful for their young brides), but Rasheed carries his physical assaults beyond the bedroom.

In The Thorn Birds, Luke is ecstatic to be married to the wealthy and beautiful Meggie Cleary. From his youth, Luke has been an indefatigable worker, shearing more than two hundred sheep a day, six days a week. The author portrays Luke as a man who worships industry and profit margins above everything else. Although he's attracted to his wife, he views her as a means to an end, both sexually and financially.

He initially makes his decision to woo Meggie on the assumption that her family might provide them with sizable land for her dowry. When he learns the Catholic Church is actually the true owner of Drogheda, he's disappointed but unbowed in his determination to snag a wealthy wife. Luke is the kind of man who loves "hard cash far more than what it might eventually buy him; not the possession of land, nor its inherent power, but the prospect of stockpiling rows of neat figures in his bankbook, in his name." Luke views Meggie as a woman who will help him realize his dreams.

Like Luke, Rasheed is wholly self-absorbed and egotistic. Luke looks at women as objects of pleasure; to him, a beautiful woman is only good for one thing. Beyond the confines of the bedroom, he has very little use for Meggie unless it concerns his pocketbook. Luke's desire for wealth far exceeds his desire for sexual satiation. Essentially, money is his god, and he makes no pretense of religious devotion. In the novel, Luke adamantly refuses to convert to Catholicism in order to marry Meggie; for her part, Meggie has to be content with being married by Father Thomas in the presbytery without the traditional nuptial Mass or blessings.

On the other hand, Rasheed proudly maintains all the outward appearances of religious devotion but secretly enjoys pornographic magazines in his spare time. To get to the heart of the matter, Rasheed's religiosity is only of a surface quality. He doesn't fast on most days during Ramadan, and his requirement that his wives wear the burqa is more a demonstration of his dominance over them than an indication of any sort of religious devotion.

The most reprehensible part of Rasheed's character is that he holds no reservations about striking his defenseless wives. When he discovers Laila has been meeting with Tariq, Rasheed becomes violently angry. He proceeds to use his belt to strike out at Laila; with great fury, he chases the terrified woman all over the house until he catches up with her and slams her against the wall. Cornered, Laila can do nothing but claw and scratch frantically at her husband. When Mariam tries to pry Rasheed away from Laila, he turns on Mariam.

In order to save Mariam, Laila slams a drinking glass against the side of Rasheed's head. Even though Rasheed is bloodied by Laila's defensive measure, he immediately turns on Laila and uses his bare hands to grab her by the throat. Mariam tries to pry Rasheed off, but she's unsuccessful. To her horror, she realizes Rasheed means to strangle Laila to death; if she doesn't intervene, Rasheed will kill both her and Laila. In the end, Mariam goes to the tool-shed and retrieves a shovel, which she uses to kill Rasheed. Even though it's an act of self-defense, Mariam is left emotionally scarred by the effort.

So, by all indications, Rasheed is more villainous, a reprehensible man willing to resort to murder to fulfill the dictates of his ego and perverted conscience.