What would be a major turning point in the beginning of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird?

A turning point in a story is the moment the rising action becomes falling action, leading to the story's resolution. The turning point is the most intense moment of the story, also called the climax. In the beginning of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, all action is still considered rising action. There are, however, two central plots in To Kill a Mockingbird, and it is in the middle of the book that one plot reaches its turning point, while the other does not reach its turning point until the end.

The main plot concerns the children's coming-of-age story. While Scout and Jem reach their greatest points of maturity in different parts of the book, it's not until the very end of the book that Scout, the main protagonist, reaches her greatest point of maturity; therefore, the turning point concerning the children's coming-of-age story does not occur until the end of the book. The second plot concerns Atticus's decision to defend Tom Robinson, a decision that significantly influences the children's maturity.

The turning point concerning Atticus's defense of Tom Robinson occurs in Chapter 22, at the trial, the moment Judge Taylor reads the jury's guilty verdict. Prior to that moment, the reader hopes as Jem hopes, which is that all circumstantial evidence Atticus revealed during the trial pointing to Robinson's innocence and Bob Ewell's guilt is enough to convince the jury. The evidence that is most damaging for the Ewells is the fact that Mayella had been bruised in her right eye by a left-handed man standing before her; Robinson is completely crippled in his left arm and hand, whereas Ewell is left-handed. Jem expresses his confidence that Robinson will be acquitted when he says to Reverend Sykes, " ... but don't you fret, we've won it ... . Don't see how any jury could convict on what we heard--" (Ch. 21). Yet, the jury returns with a guilty verdict, sealing Robinson's fate. While Atticus hopes there is a chance at appeal, all action upon hearing the verdict turns to falling action, culminating in the resolution of Robinson being killed attempting to escape prison, desperate to take matters of justice into his own hands. Since all action concerning Robinson's trial turns to falling action the moment we learn the verdict, we know this is the turning point or climax concerning this particular plot line within the story.

Are there any similarities between William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots?

All three lived during roughly the same period in Britain, although Shakespeare was born more than two decades after the birth of the two queens and survived into the rule of James I. All were influential, although Shakespeare was known primarily for his writing and the two queens for their actions as rulers. Elizabeth I was highly educated and wrote a small number of preserved poems as well as letters and speeches. All three were literate and Christian and would have known Latin as well as English.

Mary, Queen of Scots, or Mary Stuart, was born on 8 December 1542 and was executed on 8 February 1587. She reigned in Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567. She was a Roman Catholic and eventually executed by Elizabeth I for treason.

Elizabeth I was born on 7 September 1533 and died on 24 March 1603. She was a Protestant and reigned from 17 November 1558 until her natural death in 1603, a long and prosperous reign. 

William Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 23 April 1616. The evidence concerning his religion is limited, with some scholars arguing that he was Protestant and others for Catholicism. Unlike the two queens, he was not royal or even an aristocrat, but the son of a moderately prosperous middle class family.

In The Merchant of Venice, what reasons are given by Salarino and Salanio for Antonio's depressed state in Act 1, scene 1?

Antonio's two friends suggest a variety of reasons for his somber mood. A condition he, himself is at a loss to explain. He tells them at the beginning of the scene:

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself.

He admits that his sadness is wearisome for both he and his friends but he does not understand why he feels as he does and that he is at sixes and sevens and needs to learn much about himself to understand his melancholy.

Salarino proposes that Antonio might be concerned about his merchandise at sea. Since he is a sea-merchant, he should surely be concerned about the vagaries of the oceans. Salanio adds that if he were in the same situation, he would be constantly anxious about the direction of the wind and that he would be so worried about every possible risk that, indeed, he would be sad as a result.

Salarino then continues in the same vein, stating that he would be apprehensive about every possible weather condition. He would want to know which way the wind blows or if there is a stillness at sea which could hamper a speedy journey. He would want to know whether there are dangerous rocks or shallow waters which might further impede the delivery of his obviously precious cargo. He asks a rhetorical question in which he expresses the idea that it would only be natural that if one is in such a state of bother that one would obviously be sad.  

Antonio, however, assures the two gentleman that it is definitely not his ventures at sea which worry him. He mentions that he is very fortunate in this regard since he has not invested his entire fortune in only one ship or one destination, but that he has a number of ships sailing to a variety of ports. He is confident that his ventures will be a success since he has not placed all his eggs in one basket.

Salarino then suggests that Antonio then might be in love but the merchant rejects the idea as nonsense. Salarino then cleverly and cryptically suggests that if Antonio is not in love either, then he must be sad because he is not happy. It is just as easy as it would be to say that he is laughing and jumping with joy because he is not sad. The suggestion is, of course, meaningless and is obviously an attempt to lighten Antonio's mood.

Salarino then alludes to Janus, the two-faced god and suggests that there are some people who have the strange nature of laughing at practically anything, whilst there are others who will remain sour and not even produce as much as a hint of a smile even though Nestor (a character from Greek mythology who was wont to give advice) would have said that there is much to laugh about if a joke had been told.

Antonio's discussion with the two indicates his naive confidence in destiny. He emphatically believes that fortune will smile in his favor. It is this belief that later drives him into freely signing a bond with extremely punitive conditions with the moneylender Shylock, as a favor to his friend and confidante, Bassanio. Central to this agreement is that Antonio will have to forfeit a pound of his flesh to Shylock if he should not meet the terms of the bond. Unfortunately, it later seems that Antonio might have tempted fate too much and things go horribly awry. But that is another story. 

Why can the components of a mixture keep their identities but those in a compound cannot?

"Keep their identities" is a vague concept, so let's try to be a bit clearer about what we're saying here. Components of a mixture keep their chemical composition, while components of a compound do not.

The reason for this is quite simple:

Mixtures are just a bunch of stuff put together in the same place. Their molecules have very weak bonds between them, just enough to keep them in their current solid, liquid, or gaseous state.

Compounds are substances made when different atoms or molecules chemically bond into larger molecules. They also have the intermolecular bonds holding them in their solid, liquid, or gaseous state, but they also have much stronger chemical bonds within their molecules.

Actions like stirring and filtering generally can separate mixtures, but not compounds, because they are not fine-grained enough to break the tight chemical bonds within the compound.

In "Aner Clute," a poem from Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology, what hypothetical story does she tell?

The story of Aner Clute is the story of a woman whose reputation came undone due to a few bad choices. Her choices became known, which led to social opprobrium and, ultimately, ostracism. The hypothesis posed by this poem is, What would happen if people, particularly women, were allowed to err without being marked for life by one error in judgment? 

Aner's life is marked by simultaneous redundancy and instability:

Over and over they used to ask me,

While buying the wine or the beer,

In Peoria first, and later in Chicago,

Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived. . .

Her buying of wine and beer is an allusion to her association with leisure. She started in a small town (Peoria), then goes on to larger cities, moving from one to another. The tone of the poem conveys world weariness because her use of the indefinite pronoun "wherever" expresses no attachment to any of these cities.

Everyone wonders "how [she] happened to lead the life, / And what was the start of it." They take a voyeuristic interest in her transgression, but no interest in her specifically, only the "start of it." 

She tells us how she explained her behavior.

Well, I told them a silk dress,

And a promise of marriage from a rich man--

(It was Lucius Atherton).

Lucius's poem directly succeeds Aner's in the anthology. His is the story of a vain playboy—a man who relied on his money and looks, though mostly his looks, to curry favor. He becomes a sad joke in old age. Unlike Aner, Lucius's flaw was not bad judgment, but a lack of self-awareness and wisdom.

She told others what they wanted to hear: that she was a woman easily fooled. She tells us, though, "that was not really it at all." She provides an allegory to explain what went wrong for her:

Suppose a boy steals an apple

From the tray at the grocery store,

And they begin to call him a thief,

The editor, minister, judge, and all the people—

"A thief," "a thief," "a thief," wherever he goes.

And he can't get work, and he can't get bread

Without stealing it, why the boy will steal.

It's the way the people regard the theft of the apple

That makes the boy what he is.

From Aner's telling, it is unclear whether or not she is an actual prostitute. She is clearly a woman who lives off of men. She embraced this lifestyle and its accompanying reputation because she could not escape it. She could not find work doing anything else because people would not allow her to do anything else, just like the boy who steals the apple in her story. Instead of lashing out and blaming her community for what she became, she allows them their myth of the "fallen woman." Their distant and disapproving regard for her, and whatever they believe her life to be, makes them feel good and righteous in comparison. This was her gift to Spoon River, and her burden.

What would be some good points to discuss in an essay on the theme "fair is foul and foul is fair" as it concerns Macbeth and Frankenstein?

Your general themes are appearance versus reality and good versus evil. Frankenstein and Macbeth approach these themes quite differently, so you might want to structure your essay to compare and contrast them.

Macbeth shows the transformation of an admirable character into an evil one through a combination of the blandishments of the three weird sisters and his own ambition. Over the course of the play, Macbeth degenerates from a "fair" hero whose ambition, bravery, and energy have caused him to be a powerful and admired supporter of King Duncan into a "foul" tyrant and murderer. Although Macbeth himself changes over the course of the play, readers are not asked to think about the nature of our own moral judgments. We are expected to share a moral stance that regards murder and treachery as evil. In the play, fair becomes foul and Macbeth's own perceptions distort.

In Frankenstein, we are confronted with the dilemma of whether, our perception of fair, as seen in the educated European Victor, and foul, as exemplified by the monster, should be reversed. We need to consider whether the fair and civilized scientist is in fact more foul than his monster, who appears hideous on the surface, but is really as much a mistreated innocent as a source of evil. The novel also asks us to question whether we should blame mistreated outcasts for lashing out at society or whether the society that has mistreated them is really the "foul" entity that is morally culpable.

Why were vertical integration and horizontal integration so significant?

Vertical integration allowed a company to control the businesses related to supplying the product for that business. For example, Andrew Carnegie developed vertical integration related to his steel company so that he also controlled mines from which he could extract iron, and he bought railroads on which to transport his steel. This made his process cheaper, and it allowed him to develop an even vaster monopoly. Today, Apple practices vertical integration, as it controls many processes related to producing and selling its products, including retail stores. 

Horizontal integration refers to the process of controlling an entire industry at the same point in the supply chain. For example, today, many media companies own television, radio, print, and internet companies. This allows them to repackage content for different media without needing to gather it again. Both of these processes were significant because they fostered the increased growth of monopolies during the Gilded Age in American history, leading to great power concentrated in the hands of a few business owners.