In Guns, Germs and Steel why did Native American societies lag so far behind Eurasian societies (chapter 18)?

A careful re-reading of the chapter you have identified
would help you to answer this question and also give you the background knowledge that
the necessarily brief response I can supply you with would lack. However, just to give
you a summary of the main points of this chapter, which will hopefully encourage you to
revisit it and read it in its entirety.

The chapter
identifies four key factors that were essential in the different rates of development
between Native American societies and Eurasian societies, which of course gave Eurasian
societies the "edge" when the two civilisations finally collided. Diamond offers the
following helpful summary:

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Thus, we have identified three sets of ultimate
factors that tipped the advantage to European invaders of the Americas: Eurasia's long
head start on human settlement; its more effective food production, resulting from
greater availability of domesticable wild plants and especially of animals; and its less
formidable geographic and ecological barriers to intracontinental diffusion. A fourth,
more speculative ultimate factor is suggested by some puzzling non-inventions in the
Americas: the non-inventions of writing an wheels in complex Andean societies... and
wheels' confinement to toys and their eventual disappearance in
Mesoamerica.

All of these
factors meant that crucially the balance of power was tipped towards Eurasian societies.
To gain a full understanding of each of these four ultimate factors, you will need to
refer once again to the book to gain an understanding of how this factors led to
dominance.

Lindner refers to the topic of his discussion with the Youngers as one of Clybourne Park's "special community problems." Why is this ironic?I think...

I think that Hansberry develops Lindner's role in the
manner she does to highlight the complexity of the problem that people of color face in
trying to integrate into largely White areas.  She is mindful that the simple
designation of "integration" is actually a complex reality that is filled with how
different people view their interests in different lights.  Lindner is one such
example.  On one hand, he presents himself as a totally reasonable man.  There is little
in the manner of his presentation that makes one believe that he is a man of violence or
of irrational hatred.  However, it becomes evident that he favors the Status Quo and
does not want to see it change.  He is a proponent of how reality is constructed as it
benefits he and his kind, at the cost of Walter and his.  In the end, his reference to
"special community problems" and his desire to want to buy out Walter is a
representation of the lengths that he will go to ensure that what is present is
maintained at all costs.  His definition of community is one that excludes people of
color.  It is ironic that he speaks of "special community problems" for he is one of
them, in the manner in which he wishes to continue the racial prejudice and
discrimination that denies the very essence of community.  Hansberry does this to show
the level of inertia and difficulty that the Youngers must endure in order to discover
and obtain their dream.

What balance can be found between freedom of expression and respect for religous beliefs?

It is certainly possible to find a balance between these
two ideals, but it is not at all possible to find a balance that will satisfy everyone
on both sides of the argument.

It would be easy to find a
particular balance.  We could easily set up a council of religious leaders who would be
empowered to ban art that they deemed to be excessively offensive.  There would then be
a balance because works that were mildly offensive would be allowed but works that were
extremely offensive would not be.

But this sort of a
balance (in addition to being unconstitutional) would not satisfy everyone.  Absolutists
on both sides of the issue would remain angry.  No matter where the balance is struck,
there will be people who think that it has been set too far to one side or the other. 
So, it would be possible to set a balance, but impossible to do so in a way that would
satisfy everyone who cares about the issue.

I have to write a literary analysis paper from feminist perspective on Hills Like White Elephants. I am having trouble with writing this.

I think that there are different elements to take on
this.  Much of this is going to depend on what approach you are going to take in the
paper.  I think that focusing on Jig and how she can represent a feminist character
might be something to pursue.  Jig represents the ideas of feminism in that she
articulates what is a woman's condition to a man who represents a form of the
patriarchy.  She does not remain in silence.  Rather, she speaks her mind, articulating
a condition that she, and other women, endure.  At the same time, she seeks to establish
some level of power in a relationship that is naturally tilted towards the male side of
power.  Another approach to take is to examine how Jig is a feminist character at the
end of the story. How does she represent feminism at the end of the narrative?  Where is
the articulation of voice evident and where is it absent?  I think that exploring this
dimension might also help to develop a feminist point of view on the story.  Finally, I
would spend some time exploring where the man is in this particular configuration.  Once
the story ends, how will power be reestablished in the relationship?  I think that
exploring this would be a good approach in any study of feminism in the short
story.

What is the setting of the novel The Giver?

The community is very different from our own in many
ways.  We do not know the exact location or time period, although since it is
dystopian/fantasy fiction we usually think of it as being set some time in the future. 
When the book opens, it is some time in the fall as Jonas is looking ahead to December
and the Ceremony of Twelve.  The story takes place in a little over a year.  The
following December, Jonas and Gabriel escape the community on the day of the Ceremony of
Twelve. 

The actual community is not described in much
detail.  It is composed of a tight collection of houses and communal buildings,
surrounded by agricultural fields and then open land.  We do know there is a river near
the community, and that there are other neighboring communities not too far away.  The
community is flat.

At some distance from the community is a
place called Elsewhere, where the word is similar to ours.  Elsewhere might be an
afterlife, like Heaven, or a real place.  In between the community and elsewhere there
are hills, other rivers, trees and woods.

Critically analyse the poem"The Blessed Damizel"

The poem "The Blessed Damozel" is an amazing poem filled
with rich imagery, details which paint a vivid picture for the engaged reader, and
passion all created with precision through word choice.

The
poem is the story of a woman anxiously waiting at the edge of Heaven for her lover to
join her after his death. The use of imagery (as completely described in the first link
below) fills the poem with a mental description which allows readers to see Heaven as if
painted by the hand of an artist and not a poet. Visually, there is no question about
the surroundings the blessed damozel sees around
herself.

While the poem is simply about the love one has
for another, Rossetti insures that the reader see the the emotional and physical drain
love has on one when separated from another.

What are some examples of figures of speech from the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens?

One of the most famous repeated figures of speech is the
reference to being "brought up by hand," as in Pip's narration from chapter 8
below:

I had
cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to
bring me up by jerks.

This
figure of speech means that Mrs. Joe beat Pip anytime he did something wrong so that he
would be well-behaved. This is a symbol, as the book
continues as abused is repeatedly doled out to Pip by Estella as he gets older, but this
is more of a verbal and emotional abuse. Symbols are indeed a type of
metaphor, so you could call it either and one phrase "by
hand" represents another... abuse. You could also call it a
euphemism because the phrase "by hand" is a much gentler
term that saying the boy is beaten or hit or
abused.

Another sentence from chapter 17 expresses several
figures of speech worth analyzing:

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So unchanging was the dull old house,
the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the
dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the
clocks had stopped time in that mysterious
place...

In the italicized
portion of this quote describing Miss Havisham's bride room, we have parallel
structure or parallelism which is the repetition of the
same grammatical form. Each phrase separated by commas begins with
the and then an adjective, and a noun, and a prepositional
phrase.

In the bold portion, the contents of a
simile exist but there is also
paradox present in the idea of time stopping. Time is
incapable of stopping.