In a triangle ABC, with B being 90 degrees. BD= DC= 4. Find area of equilateral triangle DEF.D is mid-point of BC. Traingle DEF is inscribed in...

If triangle DEF is equilateral, therefore, the following
angles are congruent:DEF `-=` EDF`-=` DFE = 60
degrees.

Since the angle EDF measures 60 degrees, the
angles EDB nad FDC measure 60 degrees, also.

Since the
angle EDB measures 60 degrees and the point D represents the midpoint of BC, thererfore,
the segment ED is the midline of triangle ABC and according to midline theorem, it is
parallel to the base AC and it is half as long.

We'll
determine the length of AC.

sin 30 =
BC/AC

BC = BD + DC = 4+4 =
8

sin 30 = 1/2

1/2 =
8/AC

AC = 16 => ED = 16/2 =
8

Since the triangle DEF is equilateral, then all sides
have equal lengths.

Therefore, the area of DEF
is:

A = DE*EF*sin 60/2

A =
8*8*`sqrt(3)` /4

A = 16`sqrt(3)` square
units.

Therefore, the area of triangle DEF is
of 16`sqrt(3)` square units.

Variation in graph with function f(x) = x^2 + kx +lposition (o,o) with parabola graph.Discribe the position of this graph f(x+c)

The given equation of parabola is given in standard
form.

Since the leading coefficient is >0, the
parabola opens upwards.

The axis of symmetry of given
parabola is parallel to y axis and it is given by:

x =
-k/2*1

x = -k/2

We'll write
the quadratic function f(x+c) = (x+c)^2 + k*(x+c) +
l

f(x+c) = (x+c)^2 + k*(x+c) +
l

f(x+c) = x^2 + 2cx + c^2 + kx + kc +
l

f(x+c) = x^2 + x(2c + k) + c^2 + kc +
l

Again, the leading coefficient is >0, therefore
the parabola opens upwards.

The axis of symmetry of given
parabola is parallel to y axis and it is given by:

x = -(2c
+ k)/2

x = -2c/2 - k/2

x =
-k/2 - c

We'll consider the
example:

f(x) = x^2 + 6x + 7

x
= -6/2

x = -3

f(x+2) = x^2 +
x(2*2 + 6) + 2^2 + 6*2 + 7

f(x+2) = x^2 + 10x +
23

x = -10/2

x =
-5

We can see that the vertex of parabola was moved to the
right by the amount of c = 2.

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src="/jax/includes/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/asciisvg/js/d.svg"
sscr="-7.5,7.5,-5,5,1,1,1,1,1,300,200,func,x^2 +
10x+23,null,0,0,,,orange,1,none,func,x^2
+6x+7,null,0,0,,,green,1,none"/>

We notice that the
green parabola is represented by the function f(x) = x^2 + 6x + 7, having the x
coordinate of vertex, x = -3 and the orangle parabola is represented by the function
f(x) = x^2 + 10x + 23, having the x coordinate of vertex, x =
-5.

The axis of symmetry is displaced by the
amount -c, therefore the vertex of parabola is moved to the left, with the amount
-c.

What themes are discussed in Act 3, Scene 1 of Hamlet?

King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Polonius, and Ophelia are
all discussing Hamlet's condition. He has appeared to be mad or losing his sanity. Of
course, the question is one that would doubt whether or not this has been played out to
be more than it really is. Is Hamlet pretending to be mad? No doubt, he is under much
stress, but he still seems to have his reasoning.

While,
the King, Queen, Polonius, and Ophelia discuss Hamlet's condition, the King and Polonius
decide to eavesdrop on Hamlet and Ophelia to determine if he is disturbed by his love
for Ophelia. During Hamlet's and Ophelia's conversation, he advised her to go to a
convent. He seems to be quite aware of what he is saying. Of course, he does caution her
that she does not want to birth his disturbed children. While Hamlet is appearing to not
be in love with Ophelia, he is preoccupied with thoughts about her and her future
children. He claims that he does not want to affect her negatively by giving her
children that will be sinners:

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Get yourself to a convent. Why would you give
birth to
sinners? I don’t care about my sincerity, but I
could
accuse myself of such things that it were better my
mother had
not had me. I am very proud, revengeful,
ambitious, with more offenses at my
command than I
have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give
them
shape, or time to commit them in. What should such
fellows as I
do crawling between earth and heaven? We
are wicked men, all, believe none of
us. Take yourself a
convent. Where's your
father?

Clearly, Hamlet is
concerned for Ophelia's welfare. This indicates that he has feelings for her, even
though he tries to prove otherwise. The theme of this conversation is based on Hamlet's
troubled mind. He began his speech with troubled thoughts. He was questioning whether he
should suffer in his mind or fight to the end. Which act is more noble is his
question:

To
be, or not to be, that is the question.
Is it nobler in the mind to
suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to fight
against a sea of troubles,
And end them by
fighting?

Truly, Hamlet is
disturbed. He may not be mad or insane, but he is an emotional wreck. He cannot think
clearly. He is battling with the idea of killing Claudius, thus avenging his father's
death. However, he also considers the fact that he may die in the process. He hopes
there is a nothingness in death just in case he does
die:

The theme of Act 3, Scene 1 would be that of Hamlet's
troubled mind to the point of being clearly disturbed. He may not be insane, but he is
emotionally drained. He cannot continue in this state for fear he will go
mad.

Prove that tan(a+b)=tana+tanb/1-tana*tanb

First, you need to write this expression correctly, using
brackets:

tan(a+b) = (tan a + tan b)/(1 - tan a*tan
b)

We'll prove this identity, using the information that
tangen function is a ratio:

tan (a+b) = sin (a+b)/cos
(a+b)

We'll use the following
identities:

sin (a+b) = sin a*cos b + sin b*cos
a

cos (a+b) = cos a*cos b - sin a*sin
b

tan (a+b) = (sin a*cos b + sin b*cos a)/(cos a*cos b -
sin a*sin b)

We'll force factor cos a*cos b, both numerator
and denominator, creating the tangent functions within
brackets:

tan (a+b) = cos a*cos b( tan a + tan b)/cos a*cos
b(1 - tan a*tan b)

We'll simplify and we'll
get:

tan (a+b) = (tan a + tan b)/(1 - tan a*tan
b)

Therefore, the identity tan (a+b) = (tan a
+ tan b)/(1 - tan a*tan b) is verified.

In Seabiscuit: An American Legend, who is Bert Blume?

The answer can be found in Chapter Fifteen of this
excellent piece of non-fiction. Bert Blume was the reason for Pollard's first terrible
accident. Pollard and Blume were old friends from long ago, and in this chapter we are
told that Blume is in trouble because he needs a rider for a horse. Note the situation
that is described:

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Blume was in trouble. A rider had promised to
gallop a green two-year-old named Modern Youth for him but hadn't shown up. there were
no other riders available. The workout was critical; the colt was scheduled to race and
needed a blowout. The race in question was a forgettable weekday event for a trifling
purse, but Blume was strapped for
money.

Pollard was always
somebody who would help out his friends if they were in need, and so he said that he
would ride the horse for his friend. The accident that occurred made Blume fall into a
fit of guilt and go on a "bender." Thus Bert Blume is a minor character who only appears
in two pages of this book, but whose impact on Pollard and Seabiscuit is massive in the
way that it was thanks to Bert Blume and Pollard's generosity that Pollard was injured
so greviously.

In Chapter 5, why are neither dogs nor humans aware of the spring weather in The Call of the Wild?

The humans in chapter 5 of Call of the Wild
make the great mistake of venturing into a setting about which they know
nothing, and they pay the price for that ignorance. They arrive in the Klondike with no
knowledge of what supplies they need, no experience in how to pack a sled to transport
those supplies, and no understanding of the critical impact the weather has on travel
and other activities in the far north. Indeed, they may have thought that spring would
be a great time to travel - in their old, more southern existence, spring was when snow
melted and travel became easier because it was warmer.

The
dogs are too tired and hungry to do anything but try to survive. Only Buck is able to
summon the determination needed to refuse to advance into the
thaw.

What was the impact of industrialization on the United States from the 1870s to 1940?

One of the most noticeable and important impacts was a
massive migration from the farm to the cities as better paying jobs were available for
more and more people as mass production facilities were expanded and farm production
became less labor-intensive as machinery came into heavy use on the farm.  This shift in
population led to political changes in cities and new problems with infrastructure and
massive new construction in order to house all the new migrants to the
city.

This in turn led to incredibly concentrations of
wealth in the hands of the men and corporations that controlled railroads and other
important pieces of the industrial process.  The growth of speculation and investment
led to some of the first large-scale investment bubbles which also led to the Great
Depression of the 1930s.

Please give some quotes from Macbeth in relation to guilt, betrayal and ambition.

This is rather an extensive question, as you have
highlighted three major themes of the play that of course can be discussed at great
length through reference to a number of different quotes. I then will offer one example
for each of the three themes you have specified.

Clearly,
one of the most famous examples of guilt comes in Act II scene 1, following Macbeth's
murder of Duncan. Note how Macbeth is tormented by what he has
done:

What
hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes.

Will all
great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand?
No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas
incarnadine,

Making the green one
red.

The way that Macbeth
feels his hands are irrevocably stained with the blood of Duncan acts as an important
symbol of his guilt.

As regards the theme of betrayal, you
might like to consider how Macbeth's betrayal of his liege and then of his country is
portrayed. In Act IV scene 3, the presentation of Scotland by Macduff clearly shows how
Macbeth has betrayed his position and responsibilities, and how Scotland suffers as a
result:

Each
new morn,

New widows howl, new orphans cry; new
sorrows

Strike heaven on the face, that it
resounds

As if it felt with Scotland, and yell'd
out

Like syllable of
dolour.

Macbeth's betrayal of
his king is shown to have had cataclysmic effects on the entire
nation.

Lastly, the theme of ambition is of course best
captured in Macbeth's soliloquy in Act I scene 7, when Macbeth discusess the prophecy he
has been given and what his response to it should be. Note how he concludes this
important soliloquy:

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I have no spur

To
prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition,
which o'erleaps itself

And falls on
th'other--

Macbeth here uses
a metaphor to describe the way that ambition can be a "spur" that can lead to tragedy,
as in the case of a horseman who leaps onto a horse so strongly that he actually goes
straight over the horse and lands on the other side.

Only one woman has occupied The Prime Minister's Chair in Australia. Who was she?

Julia Gillard is the current Prime Minister of Australia.
She is the first and only women to hold the position. Gillard is also the leader of the
Australian Labor Party. She first assumed the role of PM after Kevin Rudd, the former PM
and head of the Labor Party, lost the support of his party and was forced out, in 2010.
Shorty after this Gillard maintained power after the 2010
election.

Gillard was first elected to the House of
Representatives in 1998. She represented Lalor, Victoria. She has risen steadily
throughout her party and politics in general, serving in a variety of positions prior to
her becoming PM. She filled roles as a member of the shadow cabinet, deputy leader of
the opposition, and deputy prime minister.

Benvolio and Tybalt come upon the servants fighting. Contrast their reactions to the fight in Romeo and Juliet.

Benvolio and Tybalt are foil characters.  They are both
male, around the same age.  Benvolio is Romeo's cousin, Tybalt is Juliet's cousin.  When
we first see them in Act I, scene i they have come upon a street scene with the servants
fighting.  Their respective reactions to the fight help the viewer define who these
characters really are and predict how they will react to future
events.

When Benvolio sees the fight, he attempts to break
it up.  He seeks peace either because he is a peaceful person or he fears the
consequences of the fight.  When Tybalt appears Benvolio asks him to help bring peace. 
Tybalt answers, "Peace?  I hate the word.  As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee." 
Instead of breaking up the fight, he adds to its violence which leads to the
proclamation later by the Prince.

In this initial scene
Shakespeare sets the mood of the play.  Tension and violence will be present
throughout.  Benvolio will try to lessen it; Tybalt will add to it.  This part of the
scene is quickly followed by Romeo and Benvolio's discussion of love, so the whole
love/hate thing is established from the very beginning of the
play.

The area of a triangle is 64 cm^2. Given AB=11 cm and BC=15 cm find angle ABC.

To determine the measure of the angle B, we'll have to use
the following formula that gives the area of triangle:

A =
leg1*leg2*sine of the angle included/2

Since the lengths of
AB and BC and the value of the area of triangle are known, we'll replace them within the
formula above:

64 = 11*15*sin
B/2

We'll multiply both sides by
2:

128 = 165*sin B

sin B =
128/165

sin B = 0.775

B =
50.80 degrees

The included angle ABC measures
50.80 degrees.

In "The Gambler, the Nun and the Radio," what is the significance of listing all the patients of the hospital and their injuries?Ernest Hemingway's...

In Hemingway's tale of suffering, loneliness, and
endurance, "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio," Mr. Frazer acts as the recording
consciousness for what one critic terms "the essential disinfranchisement" of the
residents of the hospital brought in "around midnight," symbolically the darkness hour. 
The listing of the patients, those who are injured, points to the plot of Hemingway's
story which is affliction, or injury.  This is what life is--a continual injury for
everyone.  And, so, it is a futile experiment, one that must not be thought
about.

The gambler confesses to being the victim of
illusions as he is a poor idealist. Mr. Frazer decides that the connection of all the
patients and the nun is that they each have an opium:

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Religion is the opium of the people.....Yes, and
music is the opium of the people....And now economics is the opium of the people; along
with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany.....Along with these went
gambling, and opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest.  Ambition
was another....What was the real, the actual, opium of the people?....Of course; bread
was the opium of the
people.

Of course, bread is
symbolic of life. For Frazer life itself is illusionary.  And, so he plays the radio so
that he can hardly hear his thoughts.

Why do Tom and Daisy leave in chapter 9?

There could be many reasons for why they left, I feel that
they leave to not have to face the reality of their actions. In the beginning of the
novel we learn from Nick that in the end Gatsby was the one that stood out as the
'best'in his eyes and at the end of the novel Nick tells Gatsby that he is better than
all of the them put together. Gatsby signifies the hope that the dream is eternal.
whilst Tom and Daisy only destroy dreams, they do not care enough to stay and face the
consequences of their actions. Destroy and move, that way you do not see the
wreckage.

What are examples of setting, plot, dialogue, theme, and style in Beowulf?

Like many complicated narrative works, the Old English
poem Beowulf consists of such elements as plot, setting, theme,
style, and dialogue. Examples of these elements occur throughout the poem, but below are
some specific examples (from the Seamus Heaney
translation):

• The themes
  of bravery and warfare are emphasized in the poem’s very first lines,
  which declare that the Danish people

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and the kings who ruled them had courage and
greatness.

We have heard of those princes’ heroic
campaigns.
(2-3)

• The
  stylistic technique of alliteration, which is by far the most common
  stylistic trait of Old English poetry, appears in such lines as the following: “as his
  powers waxed and his
  worth was proved” (8). As this
  example illustrates, alliteration involves the repetition of consonant
  sounds.


• The main plot (or
  story-line) of two thirds of the poem begins when the poem starts to focus on Hrothgar:
  “The fortunes of war favored Hrothgar” (64).


• An important
  element of the setting of the poem involves the gloomy
  landscape in which the monster Grendel spends much of his time. The poet describes
  him

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haunting the marches, marauding round the
heath

and the desolate fens . . . .
(103-04)

• Dialogue
  appears when a thane guarding the coast of Denmark challenges Beowulf and his men to
  identify themselves soon after they have
  landed:

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“What kind of men are you who
arrive

rigged out for combat in your coats of
mail,

sailing here over the sea
lanes

in your steep-hauled boat?
(237-40)

When Beowulf answers him, true dialogue has
begun.

What are some conflicts in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Chapters 1-15)??

Fifteen chapters of Huckleberry Finn is a lot of novel and
many "conflicts" so I will only add a few to supplement the excellent answers already
provided.  

One important conflict is symbolized by the
contrast between the Widow Douglass and her sister, Miss Watson, who represent two types
of Christians. The widow is a sort of idealized Christian who does good works and is
full of Love: In many ways she represents the better side of our current philosophies,
the ones which emphasize Jesus's moral and loving message and downplay the Hell-fire and
damnation side of the equation.  Miss Watson is the opposite.  She represents a sort of
holier-than-thou Christian (or any religious person) who believes that he or she is
living in line with the rules of proper Christian behavior and that everyone else who is
not doing the same is a sinner in God's eyes and is going to suffer eternal punishment
in Hell after this life.  

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Sometimes the widow would take me one side and
talk about Providence in a way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next day Miss
Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was
two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's
Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more.
 (Chapter 3)

A very revealing
conflict of sorts is revealed in the very next sentence where Huck concludes that he
would be willing to "belong" to the widow's Providence "if he [God] wanted me" even
though he can't understand why God would want an "ignorant" as well as "low-down and
ornery" fellow like himself.  This conflict is perhaps a form of man vs. himself, for
Huck, who is with the possible exception of Jim about the most moral person in the book,
thinks of himself the way society sees his family, as white trash.  This belief that
other people, people who are better educated, or go to school, or church, or hold jobs
etc. are better people, and that God approves of such people and disapproves
of people like Huck, well, that idea is at the base of the largest conflicts
in the book.  After all, we must remind ourselves, that all the so called good,
church-going, proper, moral, upright people in the novel, for the most part, either own
slaves or approve of the institution of slavery.  For example, late in the novel, Tom
Sawyer offers to help Huck in his effort to free Jim.  Well, Huck simply cannot
understand this: To Huck, Tom is a good boy who should not be involved in such a
seriously evil (in Huck's perception, which has been warped by his society) act as
helping a slave escape: 

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Well, one thing was dead sure; and that was,
that Tom Sawyer was in earnest and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of
slavery.  that was the thing that was too many for me.  Here was a boy that was
respectable, and well brung up, and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had
characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant; and
not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or
feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a
shame, before everybody. I couldn't understand it, no way at all.
 It was outrageous...   (Chapter
34)

This passage reveals so
much of what makes Huckleberry Finn the great American classic that
it is.  Huck's sincerity and genuine good feeling, indeed love, in wishing to free Jim
from slavery is the most moral and upright thing in the novel--yet he sees himself, and
his plan to free Jim, as the exact opposite of that, as dirty, low, immoral, shameful,
literally disgusting!  This is Twain's ingenious indictment of the Southern Society he
was raised in--that it taught everyone who wanted to live in that society as an accepted
member of the social world that slavery was good, and that those who opposed slavery or
aided slaves in escaping, were evil--when Twain could see and wanted his readers to see
that the exact opposite was true: That slavery was evil and that those who opposed it or
aided slaves in escaping were good!  This conflict, that Southern Society was teaching
that what we know  to be evil (slavery) was good, and what
we know to be good (undermining slavery) was evil is the true heart
of this amazing novel.  It creates the single greatest conflict in the novel, Huck
versus himself, because Huck's natural goodness knows that the right thing to do is to
set Jim free, but his conscience, which would normally tell a person what is right or
wrong, has been warped by his Southern upbringing so horribly that he feels guilty for
helping Jim!  Thus, in the greatest chapter in the novel, Chapter 31, when Huck decides
he will literally go to Hell if that is the price he must pay for helping his friend, we
should remind ourselves that Huck has been raised among church-going, strict Baptists
for whom Hell is a real and terrible place--eternal damnation--eternal suffering and
torture--a place where one burns forever!  How tragic, that a good
boy, doing the right thing, should be made to feel that he is evil and degenerate for
actions that are objectively moral!

How is linguistic evidence used in Guns, Germs, and Steel to draw conclusions about the spread of people in the Pacific?

Chapter Seventeen is the section of this excellent book
that you want to refer to, which discusses the way that Polynesia and the islands in the
Pacific were inhabited. A very interesting point that Diamond establishes is the way
that the population of Java, most other Indonesian islands and the Philippines is
actually rather homogeneous in terms of the languages that they speak and their skin
colour. Note what Diamond observes about the linguistic
similarities:

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Their languages are equally homogeneous: while
374 languages are spoken in the Philippines and western and central Indonesia, all of
them are closely related and fall within the same subfamily... of the Austronesian
language family.

Diamond
concludes that such evidence strongly suggests that Southeast Asians or South Chinese
people spread through these islands, replacing the former inhabitants on the whole. This
evident occurred recently due to the way that skin colour has not changed. The diversity
in languages points to the way that no system of unity was established between these
different islands.

What fantasies did Dr. Manette have while in prison in Chapter 17 of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens?

On the night before she is to be married, Lucie sits with
her father under the plane-tree at their house in Soho.  Without knowing Darnay's
history, Lucie speaks to her father in the hopes that they will not be parted.  Her
father reassures her that his future will be all the brighter through her marriage. 
Further, he tells his daughter that her life should not be wasted for his sake.  Then,
he reminisces about how lonely he was in prison and how he looked at the same moon above
them now. 

“I
have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had
been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother’s
shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There
was a time in my imprisonment when my desire for vengeance was
unbearable.)

Dr. Manette
thought about his unborn child from whom he had been taken, and he wonders if the mother
miscarried the baby from the terrible shock of losing her husband.  Or, he wonders, if
the baby lives, if it is female or male, a son who would avenge his
imprisonment. 

On evenings that he counted the
perpendicular lines he could draw upon the face of the moon, the prisoner of North Tower
wondered if he had a daughter who knew nothing of him.  As time passed, he wondered,
too, if she were married to a man who knew nothing of his fate. But, he had also
imagined his child coming to him at the prison and leading him out to
freedom.

Then, the doctor of Beauvais tells Lucie of a
phantom that he saw; this was another image that stood before him, one that moved,
unlike the figure on the moon.  It, too, resembled the mother. In the moonlight, he
imagined this phantom taking him out to show him her home that was full of loving
remembrance of her "lost father." She had his picture in her room, "and in her
prayers."  Her life was "active, cheerful"; but his "poor history pervaded it."  This
phantom showed the physician her children, who had been taught to pity him.  Whenever
they passed a prison, they looked up at the bars, whispering to each other.  And,
although the phantom came many times, she could not deliver him from his prison for more
than the little visits.

Then, Dr. Manette embraces Lucie
and tells her that even in his wildest thoughts, he was never as happy as he is now to
have known her and to be with her.

Why does the boy wants to see Old Ben in "The Bear"?

The answer to this question has to do with the curious and
compelling fascination that the bear manages to exert on the boy and on all of the
hunters who come year in and year out to try and "hunt" the bear, though of course,
during the course of the story, the boy discovers that they have no serious intention of
killing the bear. It is the boy's first failure to see the bear whilst it is close to
him that births the desire and determination within him to see it. Note what he says,
justifying his response:

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So I must see him, he
thought. I must look at him. Otherwise, it seemed to him that it
would go on like this forever, as it had gone on with his father and Major de Spain, who
was older than his father, and even with old General Compson, who had been old enough to
be a brigade commander in 1865. Otherwise, it would go on so forever, next time and next
time, after and after and after. It seemed to him that he could never see the two of
them, himself and the bear, shadowy in the limbo from which time emerged, becoming time;
the old bear absolved of mortality and himself partaking, sharing a little of it, enough
of it.

The boy therefore
feels the need to objectively look at the bear in fact rather than the myth he has
become. It appears to him that there is a cycle going on through the generations, of an
inability to see the bear, that he wants to break. Only then can he begin to penetrate
the mystery of the bear and understand the magnetic compulsion that it yields on both
him, his father and others.

What supplies did Chris McCandless bring to Alaska in Into the Wild?

This was one point in the story where I was almost angry,
as McCandless brought almost nothing with him before he trudged off into the Alaskan
wilderness, even as winter approached.  I could never decide whether this was because he
was simply ignorant of the challenges he was going to face or the reality of an Alaskan
winter, or if he had some manic tendency that disconnected his thinking processes from
logic.

As he was hitching a ride to the frontier trailhead,
the man dropping him off knew full well the danger McCandless was embracing, and even
though he was a stranger, gave him a heavy jacket and a pair of Alaskan boots out of
fear for Chris' life.  McCandless then severs the last tie he'll have with humanity in
his short life by handing the man the last handful of coins, the last money of any kind,
that he still possessed, and marched off to his eventual death.

Are the older men or younger men correct in "Shooting an Elephant"?

Your question refers to the final paragraph, which comes
after Orwell has shot the elephant, and which tells us the way that the other colonial
officers greeted the news of what happened. Let us just remind ourselves of what the
text says at this point in the novel:

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Among the Europeans, opinion was divided. The
older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an
elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn
Coringhee coolie. And afterward I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put
me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the
elephant.

If we look at this
quote carefully, we can infer that the division of opinions is related to the age of the
colonial staff that give their opinion. It is perhaps the older men who are more able to
grasp the bigger issue that is at stake with their experience. They perhaps know, even
better than Orwell does, the way that it is important to maintain the illusion of power
and provide a spectacle for the "natives," even though, as Orwell eloquently
establishes, that power is actually ironically based on a kind of slavery. The younger
men think only of profit and economic motives, which places the life of an elephant as
being worth more than a "coolie." Clearly, their opinion is related to their lack of
experience and knowledge concerning colonialism and the narrow, profit-based motive that
is at the heart of so much colonial enterprise.

Personally,
I think the older men are right, as their opinion shows their experience and their
appreciation of the kind of situation a white man finds himself in when he takes power
over others. The younger men's view shows their lack of experience and their narrow,
restricted view of the situation.

What is the nature of the relationship between Santiago and Manolin in The Old Man and the Sea?

Santiago is the old man, the experienced, knowledgeable,
physically declining but still mentally alert and caring mentor to Manolin, the would-be
apprentice to the master fisherman. Santiago enjoys Manolin's company and conversation,
appreciates his assistance with tasks that are becoming too strenuous, and understands
the need for Manolin to learn the lessons that will allow him to make a living from the
sea. Manolin cares deeply for Santiago, worries about him, attempts to make his life
easier when he can.

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The boy took the old army blanket off the bed
and spread it over the back of the chair and over the old man's shoulders..."Wake up old
man," the boy said and put his hand on one of the old man's knees..."Supper," said the
boy. "We're going to have supper...Keep the blanket around you," the boy said. "You'll
not fish without eating while I'm alive." "Then live a long time and take care of
yourself," the old man
said.

The relationship is
filled with affection, respect, and the deep enjoyment of shared interests and
ambitions.

What makes Assef evil in The Kite Runner?

Assef is the worst of what the cultural divide in
pre-Soviet Afghanistan could have created. He is Pashtun, like Amir, and has learned
that Hazaras are "less than," so he seeks to capitalize on that fact. The fact that
Assef is half-German is inescapable as well; clearly the connection to Hitler and his
theories of a superior race factor into Assef's way of
thinking.

What is most bothersome (and rightly so) is
Assef's assault on Hassef as a punishment to "put him in his place." It is helpful to
focus on the fact that such an assault is about the violent show of power, and not a
matter of sexuality.

To a certain extent, we must also
recognize that since this is Khaled Hosseini's first novel, it makes sense to have a
clearly indentifiable antagonist. Assef is a classic bully, and a reader could easily
imagine a bully becoming a Taliban leader, and that he would "go after" the child of the
boy who embarassed him so many years ago. It also provides the opportunity for the
foreshadowing (hint: slingshot) to come full circle.

What does "Sonny's Blues" imply about the relationship between life and art?

A key theme to Baldwin's literature is the way that art is
shown to be able to either alleviate people's suffering or to save them from it
altogether. An important part of this story is the way that Sonny is able to use blues
and jazz music as a vital outlet for his feelings of despair, loneliness and agony. We
can draw a useful link between music and the way that the two brothers gradually become
closer and closer, as at first, the narrator does not understand his brother's
fascination with jazz and blues music. However, at the end of the story, in a vital
section of the plot, the narrator goes to a jazz club and hears his brother play. This
triggers a kind of epiphany for him, as he understands the fascination that music exerts
in Sonny's life, and how it can be used to help endure suffering. Note the narrator's
reaction to hearing his brother play:

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I seemed to hear with what burning he had made
it his, and what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting.
Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if
we would listen, that he would never be free until we did. Yet, there was no battle in
his face now, I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until
he came to rest in
earth.

Through his music, the
narrator realises that Sonny is able to express his suffering and sorrow, but also to
not allow it to control him. His music allows Sonny to express the hope of freedom. Thus
we can see that in this excellent short story, art, in the form of jazz and blues music,
is shown to be a force that allows characters to transcend their problems and
woes.

Describe the make-up of the US Army during the Vietnam War.

During the Vietnam War, the US Army was made up partly of
volunteers, but also partly of soldiers who had been drafted.  Overall, the Army was
skewed in its demographics.  It was made up of a disproportionate number of young men
from poor and working class backgrounds.

One reason for
this was the draft.  About one-third of the entire Army during the Vietnam War was made
up of draftees.  Since college students could get draft deferments, young men from
middle and upper class families (those most likely to go to college) were not well
represented in the Army.  In addition, many of those who enlisted because they expected
to be drafted were from this demographic group as well.

The
most distinctive thing about the make-up of the US Army during this war, then, was the
fact that it was made up of a substantial number of draftees and of poor and working
class young men.

Chapter 1 of Book the 2nd in A Tales of Two Cities is a typical of Dicken's style: discuss his use of figures of speech, sentence construction,...

In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles
Dickens paints with his sentences; for, he uses long sweeping strokes of his
brush--excessively verbose phrases and sentences in imitation of the long-winded lawyers
such as C. J. Stryver, and short strokes of his literary brush to emphasize movement, as
in his swift description of the beginning of the French
Revolution:

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Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone
walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and
smoke....

Certainly,
Dickens's repeated words and phrases create a dominance of an idea on his literary
canvas, lending emphasis to that idea. At the beginning of Chapter I of Book the Second,
for instance, Dickens writes that Tellson's Bank is old-fashioned twice.  Then, he
repeats the word very four times in one sentence, and the
word proud four times in the following sentence which also contains
parallelism with its phrasing:

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 TELLSON’S BANK BY Temple Bar was an
old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was
very small, very dark,
very ugly, very incommodious.
It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral
attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness,
proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its
incommodiousness.

Later,
Dickens satirizes this pride in Tellson's antiquated characteristics with parallels
to the false pride in England for its antiquated laws by
writing,

Any
one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding
Tellson’s. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very
often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long
been highly objectionable, but were only the more
respectable.

Then, with
characteristic metaphor and ironic humor, Dickens writes that Tellson's Bank "was the
triumphant perfection of inconvenience."  His humorous description rather
darkly compares the bank to a prison with the young man coming into Tellson's London
house being hidden

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somewhere until he was old. They kept him in a
dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon
him.  Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly oring over large books, and
casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the
establishment.

Towards the
latter part of the chapter, Dickens employs comic relief in the description of Mr.
Cruncher and his "private lodging" at Whitefriars, "not...a savory neighbourhood." 
Enhancing the comic relief, Dickens has Jerry lying under a patchwork blanket, "like a
Harlequin at home."  Using rather elevated prose to emphasize the contrast of Jerry's
brutal behavior, however, Dickens writes,

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After hailing the morn with this second
salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a
third. 

The
doppelganger motif is also in this chapter as little Jerrry mirrors
his father by sitting on the stool outside Tellson's, excited when he is given an
errand, pointing to the doubles that exist in the novel as well as the motif of the
rigidity of social class.

Please help me support the following statement: "Kate Chopin sympathizes with Edna but does not pity her."

This is an excellent statement to consider. However, to be
honest, I actually think that Chopin both sympathises and pities the character of Edna,
and that in the character of Edna Chopin expresses and captures many of her own
frustrations with the limitations placed upon women in her time. The way that Edna feels
that there is no way out of her trapped and restricted position apart from suicide is
meant to make us feel sorry for her.

However, that aside,
if I were to try and argue the reverse, I would want to start by looking at the various
negative ways in which it could be argued Edna is presented, especially regarding her
selfish attitude and the way that she practically deserts both her husband and children.
Consider, for example, the way that in Chapter 37, when she is present at the latest
birth of her friend Adele, she is forcibly reminded of her duties as a
mother:

She
was still stunned and speechless with emotion when later she leaned over her friend to
kiss her and softly say goodbye. Adele, pressing her cheek, whispered in an exhausted
voice: "Think of the children, Edna. Oh think of the children! Remember
them."

Clearly, we can take
this comment as a kind of rebuke. Adele is trying to remind her friend of the various
people who are dependent upon her, and is gently pointing out that Edna's rejection of
the roles that society has given her of mother and wife will actually harm her husband
and children. It could be argued that it is Edna's rejection of her roles, and the way
that she tries to establish a life for herself away from them, that gives her the
opportunity to develop inappropriate relationships. Taking such a view would allow us to
feel sympathy for Edna, but not to completely pity her, as we can see that her misery is
at least partly a result of her own actions.