What is the theme of Masks by Ezra Pound?

To a considerable extent, "Masks" is very much the archetypal Modernist poem, giving voice to the concerns of the so-called "Lost Generation" of the post-WWI era. During this period of rapid social and political change, countless artists like Pound effectively lived double lives. They threw themselves into a maelstrom of hedonistic excess in the fleshpots of Europe, while at the same time attempting to find stability and meaning in the only place they knew where to find it: their art.
Yet in "Masks" Pound expresses profound skepticism of this approach. The modern-day poet is trying to recapture some semblance of a vanished wisdom. To that end, he dons a mask, taking on a whole new identity. He puts on the mantle of an ancient seer or prophet whose art grants him privileged access to the profoundest truths. But the modern poet has been cut off from the past, severed from his cultural origins to such an extent that he lacks the capacity to articulate those truths.
To be sure, the modern poet does possess the remarkable ability to penetrate hidden depths to see the truth of the world as it really is. But without the language of the past, he cannot put this truth into words, at least not adequately. When all is said and done, all he can really do is ponder the universe and all its mysteries in silence:

All they that with strange sadness in their eyesPonder in silence o'er earth's queynt devyse?
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/masks/

How is magma formed?

Magma is extremely hot liquid or semi-liquid rock. Magma is the same thing as lava, except that lava is what we call magma when it reaches the earth's surface. The liquid rock that comprises most of our planet's mantle layer is known as magma.
The minerals that form magma are the same as the minerals in other rocks in the earth's crust. The reason much of the rock in the mantle layer of the earth is molten, or liquid, is because of the high temperatures and pressures formed by the weight of the earth's crust.
Magma can be formed by either wet or dry melting. Dry melting occurs when a rock that doesn't have carbon dioxide or water present reaches its melting point. Wet melting occurs not just at the mineral's melting point but at a variety of temperatures, because the presence of carbon dioxide or water changes the melting point of the substance.
There are three types of magma, and each is formed from different conditions. Basaltic magma forms through dry partial melting of the earth's mantle, which lies directly under the crust. Convection causes the hot mantle material to rise closer to the crust, which warms the crust. This increased crust temperature then increases the temperature gradient in an area enough to cause partial melting of some mantle material.
When basaltic magma rises higher in the mantle, it can increase temperatures in an area of the earth's crust. Partial wet melting of the continental crust produces another kind of magma: rhyolitic magma.
When continental plates pull away from each other under the ocean floor, pressure increases and water rushes into the mantle layer. Water lowers the melting point of the minerals, so partial wet melting occurs. This produces basaltic magma. If this basaltic magma comes in contact with continental crust containing dense dioxide silicon and mixes with that melted material, it forms the third type of magma: andesitic magma.
https://opentextbc.ca/geology/chapter/3-2-magma-and-magma-formation/

In your opinion, why does Beverley Naidoo include Marcia in the novel The Other Side of Truth. What significance does she have in this story?

As soon as Sade begins her new school in England, it's clear to her that she's going to have a lot of trouble with Marcia, the resident bully. Marcia makes it clear that she doesn't like Africans and so she singles out the new girl for bullying and harassment. Like Sade, Marcia is black, but she comes from a Jamaican, not an African background, which somehow makes her feel superior.
What Marcia's unpleasant behavior towards Sade indicates is that racism can blight society to such an extent that it can even keep people apart who belong to the same race. Marcia and Sade are both black, but there's no racial solidarity between them. Naidoo appears to be suggesting that society's prevailing racism has been internalized by too many black British people to the extent that it manifests itself in a misguided sense of cultural superiority.

“Everything about him was old except his eyes, and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated” (Hemingway 10). How does this quote impact the story?

This is a powerful quote from this story because of what it does in terms of direct and indirect characterization of Santiago. We are directly told that he is old and his eyes are the same color as the sea. In my mind, I see his eyes as a grey color, but I suppose blue works too. The exact color is irrelevant. What is more important is that his eyes, as a window to the soul, are cheerful and undefeated. Santiago may be in a slump when it comes to fishing, but he has not lost hope. It's why he goes out day after day. The cheerful and undefeated aspect of his eyes also speaks to Santiago's spirit of perseverance. We are told this quote in the first few paragraphs, so we haven't had first hand experience with Santiago's never give up spirit; however, the quote alerts readers to the possibility that Santiago has deep reserves of fight within his old body. We will definitely see that as he wrestles the huge fish and ultimately comes back empty handed, yet we never get the feeling that he has been defeated.

The quotation tells us that despite his advanced years and the inevitable physical decay of his body, Santiago's spirit still lives on. His body may have been defeated by the ravages of time, but Santiago's smiling eyes are the window to a soul that retains an almost mystical kinship with the natural world. His eyes are as blue as the shimmering sea that surrounds him, indicating that this is where Santiago truly belongs. He is one with the ocean. Because Santiago is an intrinsic part of the natural world, this gives him the strength and inner resolve to be able to overcome the myriad hardships and challenges that nature throws at him and that he is required to overcome in his epic quest to land a giant marlin.

How does the concept of coca-colonisation illustrate the Franco-American relationship during the Cold War era?

"Coca-Colonization" is used to describe the spread of American material culture throughout the world, beginning with Western Europe, in the aftermath of World War II. Historian Reinhold Wagnleitner, who grew up in Austria during this period, describes it as "cultural imperialism." With the outbreak of the Cold War, an essentially ideological conflict, American leaders were conscious that American consumer goods could be used to illustrate the differences between the American way of life and the lifestyle associated with Soviet-style communism. So during this period, as American investment capital poured into Western Europe, American companies flooded the region with the candy bars, cigarettes, movies, clothing, music, and other things that were being mass-produced and mass-marketed in the United States. Coca-Cola, of course, was a quintessential American brand, and it became ubiquitous in Western Europe. For this reason, the phenomenon of American products flooding European markets was named for the popular soda.
As for what the issue of Coca-colonization can tell us about Franco-American relations, the answer is complex. Basically, many people in France were opposed to the phenomenon. These included, in a particularly odd coalition, French communists opposed to what they saw as American attempts to "buy" Western Europe by flooding it with commercial goods, and French conservatives who saw American goods, and American culture in general, as crude and crass, a threat to traditional French culture. This illustrates a fundamental ambivalence that transcended cultural and economic concerns. On the one hand, France wished to restrain the spread of communism, which they saw as a threat. They were for this reason a crucial American ally. On the other, French nationalists, particularly long-time President Charles De Gaulle, were uneasy with the NATO alliance, believing it a infringement on their own sovereignty. For this reason, France actually temporarily and partially left NATO in the early 1960s. More than any other Western European nation, France had a close but ambivalent relationship with the United States, and resistance to "coca-colonization" is nicely illustrative of this.
https://books.google.com/books?id=4XJuCQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=coca+colonization&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjD0KvugaDfAhWvxFkKHfg2Dd0Q6AEIKjAA

https://books.google.com/books?id=wkXsC_P80ysC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+McDonaldization+thesis&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidqpi-g6DfAhUNrVkKHa57D-8Q6AEIKjAA

In T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone, what are four quotes that show how Wart changes as a person throughout the book?

The first part of T.H. White’s King Arthur texts The Once and Future King chronicles the legendary hero’s childhood as Wart, the nickname a young Sir Kay bestowed upon his foster brother.
The story begins with Wart’s tutoring alongside the noble, socially superior Kay. As an orphan, Wart feels different than Kay, and he prefers to avoid the topic of his parentage. As the pair of boys go out for a rabbit hunt, the narrator discusses Wart’s anxiety about this subject. A quote from this early point in the text is below:

“He admired Kay and was a born follower. He was a hero-worshipper.”

Although Kay is only two years older than Wart, the younger boy idolizes him. This quote also shows that Wart does not show leadership skills at this point in his life.
Later on, when Merlyn trains Kay and Wart at proper tilting, the narrator describes Wart as a passive participant in this:

"Wart was pleased that it was Kay's turn to go through it now and he lay drowsily in the shade, snoozing, scratching, twitching like a dog and partly attending to the fun."

This quote shows that Wart is immature. At this point, he is uninterested in becoming a master of tilting, and he would rather be left to his leisure, pursuing the activities he wanted instead of the ones in which he is forced to participate. Wart is not yet ready for responsibilities, which also explains why he prefers to follow instead of lead.
Wart experiences little personal growth through the years (the narrator even remarks he is “still stupid”) until the time comes for Merlyn to move on, Kay to be knighted, and Wart to become his squire. When Wart is tasked with fetching Kay’s forgotten sword, Wart instead pulls the sword from the stone, a miraculous feat that he doesn’t seem to understand:

"He saw that his dear guardian was looking quite old and powerless, and that he was kneeling down with difficulty on a gouty knee.
'Sir,' said Sir Ector, without looking up, although he was speaking to his own boy.
'Please do not do this, father,' said the Wart, kneeling down also. 'Let me help you up, Sir Ector, because you are making me unhappy.'"

His excerpt shows that Wart is both crafty (for quickly finding a replacement sword) and humble (he feels uncomfortable seeing Ector kneel). Wart fulfills his destiny as the future king because of his humility. Wart will reluctantly become the leader, but he will not abuse his power over others.
Once the Wart is crowned as King Arthur, he gains a new confidence that stems from public perspective:

"several burghers of the City of London asked him to help them in taking stoppers out of unruly bottles, unscrewing taps which had got stuck, and in other household emergencies which had got beyond their control."

This quote explains how pulling the sword from the stone earned Wart public notoriety and respect. Although the requests of the burghers seem comical in their simplicity, this quote shows that people now trust and look up to Wart, once an unconfident boy who preferred to fade into the background.

What is the general setting of Hamlet?

Setting is divided into two categories: time and place. Let us take each in turn. First, most scholars agree that Hamlet is set in the later middle ages (at some point in either the fourteenth century or the fifteenth century). One must also realize that the play Hamlet is meant to be seen on the stage, and the directors of a particular production may choose to change the setting of time to any era they choose. Therefore, the only setting that can be discussed here is the one which Shakespeare reveals through the text. Second, Shakespeare's Hamlet is set in the country of Denmark. (You may be familiar with the famous quotation, often used as an allusion to the play, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.") We can be even more specific with the aspect of setting by saying that the play is set in a royal castle in the Danish city of Elsinore.

Who is Jimmy Lee Powell in A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich?

In Alice Childress's novel A Hero Ain't Nothin' But A Sandwich, Benjie is a young African American boy who becomes addicted to heroin. Jimmy Lee Powell is a former friend of Benjie's who plays a role in Benjie's descent into addiction.
By his own admission, Jimmy Lee gave Benjie his first "jointa pot" when they used to be so close that they were always together. However, once Benjie became a full-fledged "junkie," Jimmy Lee doesn't like hanging out with Benjie, who has gone from best friend to a combative "hanger-on." Jimmy Lee does not enjoy experimenting with drugs; he says it is important to have his "wits woke" in the dangerous neighborhood in which he lives.
Later on in the book, when Jimmy Lee narrates a second chapter, he expresses his desperation to escape his home life for a time until he can think straight. Unlike Benjie, who receives help because of his addiction, Jimmy Lee feels as if no one notices his problems or offers any sort of aid because his case is not bad enough to be noticed. Jimmy Lee wishes that he and Benjie were still friends, but he is scared of what Benjie has become.

In what ways did Benjamin Franklin personify the idea of the American capitalist? How accurate were these descriptions?

Benjamin Franklin, more than any other founding father (in my opinion), personified capitalism and the American Dream. He had many qualities that made him an example of this concept.
First, he was inventive. Franklin was an intelligent and creative man who came up with many revolutionary ideas and built them to success. In this way, he personifies the creative heart of American capitalism: the idea that you can take a new idea and turn it into a business.
Second, he was tireless. His works are recorded all over American history, and it is clear that he never ceased working. He was a politician who traveled to Europe frequently, he developed and worked in the first volunteer fire department in the United States, he created a printing and news company to distribute mailers with his scientific and political ideas, and he was also an inventor.
Finally, he was an activist. In the capitalist mindset, businesspeople take an active role in their governmental proceedings, and, as a politician and founding father, Franklin was clearly heavily involved in politics. Primarily speaking, true to a capitalist mentality, he was an activist for small government and states’ rights. These are just a few things that made him the picture of capitalism.

What position does Laurie saunders hold on The Gordon Grapevine?

Laurie Sanders works as editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper, The Gordon Grapevine. Laurie takes her role pretty seriously, which is more than you can say for the others who work on the paper. They're incredibly lazy and always leave Laurie to do the lion's share of the work.
However, all that changes after The Wave takes over campus and rapidly develops into a sinister cult that demands obedience from the entire student body. Alex and Carl, who work with Laurie on the newspaper, and have never liked The Wave from the start, publish a special issue of The Grapevine that exposes this disturbing new phenomenon and all it represents. In her editorial in the special issue, Laurie strongly criticizes The Wave, which is becoming ever more violent and intolerant towards those who disagree with the movement. In publishing this editorial, Laurie is showing great courage. Even more importantly, she's showing the importance of free speech and a free press in combating the rise of extremist organizations.

How were baseball and football at the center of new leisure and mass culture in the late 1800s?

Around this time, more people were able to join middle management at factories. This gave the United States a new leisure class who had disposable income to go to baseball and football games. The modern game of baseball has been around since the time of the Civil War. Teams started to play regularly and employ professional players, though the profession was not as well-paid and respected as it is today. Advertisers used magazines, baseball cards, and billboards at stadiums to promote teams and their products. Many of the first baseball cards came in packs of cigarettes. It was not expensive to go to a baseball game, and the rules were quite lax at the stadium, with some stadiums being so small that extra seating was available on the outfield grass.
While professional football would not become important until the 1920s, college football became important in the late nineteenth century. People enjoyed the constant action of the sport and the element of danger it carried; with the rudimentary equipment of the day, serious injuries and even deaths were not uncommon. The rise of the sport coincided with a slight uptick in the number of people going to college, though many people who could never afford college became some of the sport's most avid supporters. Many of the early college football powers were Ivy League schools in the East who relied on close proximity to each other to make travel easier.

Character traits of sir roberts?

Sir Robert Morton, as well as being a Member of Parliament, has the reputation of being the finest criminal barrister in England. This makes him just the kind of man to handle such a challenging case as young Ronnie Winslow's. Such an elevated position in public life has given Sir Robert an overwhelming sense of his own importance, and as such, he comes across as more than a little arrogant. Though this is just the kind of character trait one often needs to make a successful career at the Bar and in politics. And Sir Robert's supreme self-confidence is rather reassuring to the Winslows as it gives them hope that he'll be able to exonerate the poor, unfortunate Ronnie.
But Sir Robert's character proves to be a good deal more complex than the initial picture would suggest. Despite his casual, almost matter-of-fact air, he displays great passion in making a speech to Parliament on behalf of Ronnie. He also surprises Catherine Winslow by his apparent willingness to jeopardize both his political and legal careers for the sake of her brother. Beneath the arrogant exterior of the wealthy, entitled aristocrat, beats the heart of a man with a genuine passion for justice.

What was the climax of the book?

In order to answer this question, one must first define climax. In literature, the climax of a story occurs when the central conflict of the story escalates and the protagonist is forced to make a decision. Some would say the best synonym for climax is "turning point," but I would argue that this is an oversimplification. Instead, it's best to determine the primary conflict a protagonist faces and identify the point in the story at which the protagonist is finally confronted with the full weight of that conflict.
In Iris Johansen's The Face of Deception, the protagonist, Eve Duncan, faces several conflicts. The biggest of these, though, is how Duncan is pursued by nefarious enemies after she discovers the real identity of her latest forensic sculpture assignment.
If the central conflict is indeed man versus man, then the climax would naturally be when Eve Duncan must grapple with her enemies. Therefore, it is most logical to say that the climax is when Duncan's loyal friend Quinn is able to get the ruthless Albert Fiske—who has been killing every possible witness who knows the true identity of the sculpture—to stop his bloody quest.
However, one might argue that this is not the true climax, because Duncan is not directly involved in the decision-making process. Because of that, one could say that the climax of the story is when Duncan finally takes matters into her own hands instead of relying on her male friends.

What was crisis that drove Mrs. Frisby to see Mr. Ages?

Mrs. Frisby goes to see Mr. Ages because her son Timothy is gravely ill. Mr. Ages acts as a pharmacist, prescribing medications to the ill with his advanced intelligence (which the reader later learns he acquired from his time at NIMH). Mr. Ages says he has pneumonia and must stay in bed until the weather becomes warm again, or else the chill in the air will kill him. Mrs. Frisby knows she cannot do that because the farmer whose land they live on will run the tractor through their home—every time that happens, they need to leave their cinder block house.
So, it is Timmy's precarious health that inspires Mrs. Frisby to see Mr. Ages, even though he is a bit abrupt and rude.

How does Squeaky’s relationship with Raymond develop her point of view in the story?

Raymond is Squeaky's older brother; however, most people think that Squeaky is the older sibling. This is because Squeaky is constantly caring for Raymond due to his mental disability:

But a lot of people call him my little brother cause he needs looking after cause he’s not quite right.

Readers do not know exactly what is wrong with Raymond, but it becomes clear that Squeaky loves Raymond very much, and she takes her protecting job very seriously. Readers get a nice image of Squeaky being a good sister while at times even being motherly due to her relationship with and care for Raymond. She is even intentional with where she allows him to run next to her. She always puts him on the safer side:

So I keep Raymond on the inside of me [...].

Readers also get to see that Squeaky is a bit of a "momma bear" for Raymond too. Squeaky is content with taking Raymond with her all over the place, but she doesn't resent it. Her job is to protect Raymond, and she is willing to do it against insults and groups:

“You got anything to say to my brother, you say it to me, Mary Louise Williams of Raggedy Town, Baltimore.”
“What are you, his mother?” sasses Rosie.
“That’s right, Fatso. And the next word out of anybody and I’ll be their mother too.”

The American celebration after the Cold War seemed short-lived, as there were plenty of other concerns. Our adversaries were now our allies, and our allies were now competitors. The end of the Cold War knocked down the Iron Curtain, but it also destroyed conventional economic patterns. Has the end of the Cold War proved to be good for world peace, but not so good for world business?

The end of the Cold War marked the end of what is called bipolarity, or the world divided into two main powers—the United States and the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War period has proven difficult for world peace, as conflicts related to identity have emerged. Though our former adversaries, such as Russia, are our allies (at least some of the time), we have become embroiled in conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Despite American interventions, Iraq and Afghanistan are still unstable, and there are continued deadly conflicts in Syria and other nations. Therefore, the end of the Cold War did not result in world peace.
The economy after the Cold War has also been subject to shocks and disruptions, including the 2008 financial downturn, which caused a global economic recession. As the world economy has been affected by globalization, economic shocks in one area can affect other areas. Therefore, the economy has at times also been volatile since the end of the Cold War.

In many ways, our Cold War adversaries continue to be our rivals. China was one of the chief American adversaries in the Cold War, and it remains one of the United States's leading economic competitors. Russia also displays expansionist tendencies, which makes many in American politics feel as though a second Cold War may be on the horizon. The end of the Cold War may not have been good for peace, as now the main world threats are non-state actors who are harder to persecute via conventional war and sanctions. Also, many of these non-state actors have access to weapons of mass destruction, which are available due to the fall of the Soviet Union. In a way, the world is a more dangerous place than it was during the height of the Cold War.
The end of the Cold War was, however, good for world business. While China and the United States battle on tariffs, both American and Chinese markets benefit from being open and gaining new customers. The fall of the Soviet Union opened up new investment opportunities in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, places that American business would not enter before due to oppressive communist regimes. Tourism to places once forbidden because of the Cold War is a booming industry.
While the end of the Cold War was cause for celebration, there are still unresolved issues that remain. Economic and other rivalries still exist with former Cold War adversaries.

There were three major movements in global politics in the late 19th and early 20th century period that led to the outbreak of WW1. Explain structure of European alliance system on the eve of WW1. Who were the member nations of the Central Powers and of the Allied Powers

The shifting power relations in Europe and the Middle East were closely connected to internal and external conflicts and to furthering the nations’ global reach. As the European nations consolidated their own territories, not all ethnic minorities within them were satisfied with the arrangements, and independence movements often flared up. Diverse nations also joined forces with neighboring nations to strengthen their collective positions. For the smaller countries, having a more powerful partner—in terms of armaments and troops—was essential protection. Some newly consolidated nations, especially Germany, had not only industrialized rapidly but also concentrated on their military buildup. This in turn generated need for natural resources to be obtained from colonies. While all the nations were concerned with activities within and adjacent to their own borders, the global reach of imperial control was also central to the alliances and antagonisms. This was especially the case in Africa, where the “scramble” to establish control saw small footholds transformed into full-fledged colonies.
While the alliance system helped maintain peace, to some extent, the rampant militarization could not go unnoticed for long. The stronger countries began to flex their military muscle. Having a strong ally also encouraged the smaller countries to join the fray once the first declarations had been made. Further, the large territorial extent of some powers meant that fighting in remote outposts played important roles in determining the outcome. Russia extended all the way to the Pacific; the Ottoman Empire, which spanned North Africa, Europe, and Central Asia, had lost territory to Russian in 1878 and still wished to recoup it.
The Central Powers were Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. This large alliance grew out of an 1879 alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary, which became the Triple Alliance when Italy joined. War looked inevitable in 1914, after a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. As the likelihood of war accelerated, the larger countries began to mobilize and sometimes announced their intentions. Germany informed Austria-Hungary, for example, of its intended support should war be declared by Serbia and backed by Russia. The intended Russian allegiance to the Serbian cause included religious motivations, with Tsar Nicholas II invested in protecting Eastern Orthodox believers. After war was declared in 1914, Ottoman participation was kept secret for several months, and Bulgaria joined in 1915.
Operating in opposition to the Central Powers were the Entente powers, primarily the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Tsarist Russia, soon to be transformed into the Soviet Union. The pronounced German militarism had sustained rumors of war for years prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The Entente’s formation was primarily defensive against the German threat, including its naval capabilities. In 1914, as Russian announced its potential support for Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia. Once France in turn entered, Germany turned west and invaded Belgium. Britain then seemed compelled to join their allies. On the eastern side, the Ottomans declared war on Russia. Although battles were fought across Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa, the United States would enter only in 1917, after the "Great War" had been going on for three years.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Allied-Powers-international-alliance

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Central-Powers

Please explain question 69 in Summa Theologica.

Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica (written in mid-13th century Italy) is intended as a treatise to explain Christianity to students of theology. It is widely acknowledged to be one of the most influential tracts addressing baptism. Question 69 includes 10 articles on the effects of baptism, include the following (written as a dialogue, in which Aquinas provides objections to each point, and then a rebuttal of those objections):
1.) Whether all sins are taken away at baptism. On which point, Aquinas concludes that "by baptism, all sins are loosed."
2.) Whether man is freed by baptism from all debt of punishment due to sin. Aquinas states that man is forgiven by God, but is indebted to man, and so "it is right that they should be edified at his punishment."
3.) Whether baptism should take away the penalties of sin that belong to this life. Aquinas concludes that these sins will not be taken away until the resurrection.
4.) Whether grace and virtues are bestowed on man by baptism. Aquinas avows that concupiscence and its attendant evils are indeed taken away by baptism.
5.) Whether certain acts of the virtues are fittingly set down as effects of baptism (namely, incorporation of Christ, enlightenment, and fruitfulness). Aquinas clarifies that baptism effects man's good works, not his begetting of Christian others.
6.) Whether children receive grace and virtue in baptism. Aquinas concedes that children don't approach baptism with free will; however, children are not deprived of baptism's positive effects.
7.) Whether the effect of baptism is to open the gates of the heavenly kingdom. Aquinas confirms that baptism does not secure entry to heaven, though they are not spared earthly punishments.
8.) Whether baptism has an equal effect in all. Aquinas confirms that all receive complete remission of sins, but some make greater or lesser use of it.
9.) Whether insincerity hinders the effect of baptism. Aquinas concludes on this point that insincerity does constitute sin, which is forgiven by baptism.
10.) Whether baptism produces its effect when insincerity ceases. Aquinas concludes that when insincerity ceases, the sins are forgiven. Subsequent sins are forgiven by penance, not baptism.

How does Pip answer to the convict when asked where he lives?

In the opening chapter of the novel, Pip is visiting his parents' graves when an escaped convict frightens him and demands to know his name. Pip is both stunned and terrified by the threatening convict, and he immediately tells the stranger his name. When the convict asks where Pip lives, he responds by pointing toward his village, which is about a mile past the church. The convict then proceeds to lift Pip upside down to empty his pockets. After finding a small piece of bread and voraciously inhaling the food, he asks Pip who he lives with. Pip responds by telling him that he lives with his sister and Joe Gargery, who is a blacksmith. The convict then instructs Pip to retrieve a file from Joe's forge and bring him some wittles, or else he will cut Pip's heart and liver out. As a frightened, stunned child, Pip is intimidated by the convict and follows through with his instructions. This leaves a tremendous impression on the convict, who ends up anonymously financing Pip to become a gentleman.

Do you like Nick or Amy in Gone Girl? Did you find yourself picking a side? Do you think the author intends for us to like them? Why or why not?

As the protagonists’ stories emerge in Gone Girl, the reader gradually comes to see the many negative characteristics that Nick and Amy both possess. The author encourages us to question the morals of both characters.
Amy’s frustrations clearly contributed to her concocting the elaborate scheme that is evidence of her mental decline, but it is equally obviously that her mental illness preceded her marriage. The reader can both sympathize with her because she is ill and condemn her because she is a murderer as well as a manipulative liar.
Nick’s betrayal through having an affair, especially when Amy is basically stuck in his tiny hometown, shows his true selfishness. In the end, their negative qualities predominate, and the reader is likely to conclude that they deserve each other.

What was the first thing Peter Pan said to Wendy?

The first thing that Peter Pan says to Wendy is “what’s your name?”
She tells him her full name and then asks him his. He responds that it is Peter Pan, a name Wendy finds disappointingly short. She then asks where he lives, and for the first time, we hear a whimsical, unusual answer from Peter Pan. He tells Wendy that he lives,

Second to the right . . . and then straight on till morning.

Wendy comments on that address by calling it "funny."
This may not seem like much of an exciting beginning, but it establishes that Peter Pan is polite, as is Wendy. It also provides basic information about Peter Pan, and, as we learn through the narration, Wendy's opinions mean a lot to Peter. She comes across as motherly, and he seems a bit odd, especially when he begins to talk about having lost his shadow.

What does the theme of interlopers from the quote “there are better things in life than getting the better of a boundary dispute” suggest about how the two men have spent their lives?

"The Interlopers" is a short story written by Saki, the pen name of British writer Hector Hugh Munro. The story centers on two men from rival families. Their hatred for one another blinds them to the important things in life, like life itself.
Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz hate each other with a passion. The origin of this hatred is a generations-long dispute over a piece of land that each of them claims. This dispute over property dates back to their respective grandfathers. One night, the two men decide to settle the argument once and for all through a violent altercation. However, a tree falls on the two men, and they become pinned underneath it.
At first, they are still interested in saving themselves. As the night drags on, however, the two men realize that they will die if they do not cooperate. They also realize that their rivalry was senseless and that “there are better things in life than getting the better of a boundary dispute."
They decide to both call for help, hoping their combined shouting will get the attention of their respective parties. However, their voices attract a pack of wolves instead.
The moral of the story is clear, and the quote above sums it up concisely: some people are so focused on trivial offenses and issues that they don't see the important aspects of life, at least until they face an existential threat.

What is time? How did it come into existence? Is there any end of it?

The idea of the need to measure time is universal and is documented in the earliest records of ancient civilizations. The English word time comes from the Latin tempus. Time is a continuum that lacks spatial dimensions.
The challenge of defining time is compounded because such a definition seems to depend on reference to the concept that is being defined; for example, past and future have reference only to a concept of the present. In recent centuries, the concept of time has concerned philosophers and scientists. Henri Bergson, for example, posited that understanding time, or the flow of the now, is non-rational or intuitive. The idea of time as illusory is a common claim, in reference to the shifting character of the now, which constantly moves. Defining time has also been considered a problem of language; Ludwig Wittgenstein considered handling time primarily to be a linguistic problem, requiring the grasp of relations such as before and after.
For human beings, time is a flow in one direction, and as such, it is inexorably bound up with the concept of death. Preoccupation with time and terrestrial life contrasted to a possible afterlife is therefore a concern of all major religions. The idea that time may end is inseparable from the question of mortality, as for any individual, death will bring a stop to time.
https://www.britannica.com/science/time

In The Giver what areas in life do the members in community have a free choice? What areas of their lives is tightly controlled?

More often than not, the people in the story's society have very little choice. The yearly ceremonies for children are a good example. When a child becomes another year older, they are given a new item or responsibility that they must take on. Sometimes, the age requires the child to give something up. For example, when a child turns eight, their comfort object is taken away. A society that demands giving up a stuffed animal on your "birthday" is an extremely controlling society. People are even told at the Ceremony of the Twelve what job that they are going to have for the rest of their life.
The best example that I can think of that shows the society allowing some individual choice is the volunteer hours; however, even those are somewhat controlled. The "volunteer" hours are mandatory starting at age eight, but the children are allowed to choose where they would like to volunteer. Most start volunteering for Recreation Duty. Eventually, a child will begin spending more and more of his/her volunteer hours at the job that they like the most. The volunteer hours are kept track of and tabulated at the Hall of Open Records, and those hours are used to assign the child's societal role at the Ceremony of the Twelve. In a way, this allows a child to "choose" their career path.

In "The Scarlet Ibis," what does the relationship between the two brothers represent? Use evidence from the short story to support your response.

Different readers might have different ideas of what the relationship between Doodle and Brother symbolizes, so feel free to defend your own feelings. One thing that I think their relationship represents is pride. The theme of pride runs throughout this story, but it is focused on Brother's attitude toward Doodle. Brother is embarrassed by the fact that he has a little brother that can't run, jump, or do any of the things that Brother believes a little brother should do. Brother believes that he can get Doodle to do those things through hard work, practice, and perseverance. That all sounds great, but Brother's motivation isn't altruistic. He doesn't want Doodle to achieve these things for the good of Doodle. Brother wants a brother he can be proud of, and his own pride won't let him fail.

"What are you crying for?" asked Daddy, but I couldn't answer. Theydid not know that I did it for myself, that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than all their voices, and that Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother.

That pride is what ultimately will lead Brother to abandon Doodle in the storm, and readers will be forced to question whether or not Doodle may have survived if Brother had stayed back.

He had failed and we both knew it, so we started back home, racing the storm. We never spoke (What are the words that can solder cracked pride?), but I knew he was watching me, watching for asign of mercy.

How did Digory and Polly get the rings

The rings were created by Digory's Uncle Andrew using magic dust that had been left to him in a box by his part-fairy godmother, Mrs. Lefay. Instead of destroying the box as his godmother told him to, Uncle Andrew started experimenting with the magic dust, out of which he eventually forged his rings. The dust originates from the Wood between the Worlds. Some of that dust wants to return to the Wood, while some of it wants to get away. This explains why the yellow rings take you to the Wood and the green ones take you out of it.
Bearing in mind that The Magician's Nephew, like all of the books in The Chronicles of Narnia, is a Christian allegory, one could say that Uncle Andrew's experiments are meant to show us the dangers of people acting like gods and messing around with dark forces they don't fully understand.

Describe three reasons why many Americans believed it was the US's "manifest destiny" to expand the nation to the Pacific Ocean.

1. The US needed room for American population growth. The newspaper article that coined the term "manifest destiny" stated that westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean was a practical necessity to continue "the free development" (under American representative government) of our "yearly multiplying millions." The US population had grown dramatically from 5 million in 1800 to more than 23 million by 1850.
2. Americans believed in divine providence. The idea that Americans were a divinely chosen people of destiny goes all the way back to John Winthrop's "Shining City on a Hill" sermon. Early Americans viewed the vast, sparsely settled continent as a sign of God's providential blessing for them.
3. Americans desired national security. Sophisticated observers noted that being hemmed in by any foreign power (like Great Britain) to the west would pose unacceptable security risks for the United States. Security of the republic required holding the number of our borders to the absolute minimum of Canada and Mexico. The Pacific would provide greater security than any western neighbor.

How do Helen's parents, half-brother, and aunt treat her? Support your answer with details from the play.

Kate Keller, Helen’s mother, is the only member of her family who has confidence in Helen's intellectual abilities. The others assume that, because of her disabilities, her intelligence is below normal. They tend to indulge her, allowing her to behave like a willful toddler. At meals, they let her grab food off anyone’s plate rather than having her sit at her own place. Kate is affectionate with her and often addresses her, while her father, Captain Keller, rarely interacts directly with her. Both parents are concerned that she is nearing adolescence.
James, Helen's half-brother, generally ignores her when possible and speaks about her in the third person as if she were not present. For example, while she is in the room, he says to his father that Helen should be in an asylum. When Ev, Helen's aunt, comes to visit, she has numerous suggestions of specialists who might help her but is not very involved in her daily activities.

Why had Bod been warned to stay away from the far corner of the graveyard in The Graveyard Book?

Bod has been warned to stay away from the far corner of the graveyard known as Potter's Field, as that's where the criminals and suicides are buried. This doesn't mean that the people who are buried there are necessarily bad; it's just that, as Silas tells Bod, this is unholy land—land that has not been blessed by the church.
Once upon a time, it was common for the graves of suicides, criminals, and actors (yes, really) not to be consecrated by the church. This is because such people were regarded as unrepentant sinners. There was also an element of social snobbery involved, as many of the poorest were buried in unconsecrated ground due to their not having enough money for a proper funeral. It is largely the ghosts of such poor unfortunates that haunt the far corner of the graveyard and whom Bod must avoid.

What happens to Patrick during lunch that has Omri's heart "hammering with terror"?

During lunch, Patrick gets into a physical confrontation with two schoolmates after sitting down at a crowded lunch table. Patrick has the Indian and the Cowboy in his pocket when the confrontation begins. During the brawl, Patrick is shoved and goes flying backwards and lands on the floor. Omari is absolutely terrified that the two tiny humans are going to be crushed to death in Patrick's pocket. He envisions Patrick's pockets soaked with blood, and this vision causes this increase in terror. He darts in and out of the crowded lunchroom and races to Patrick's side to check on the Indian and the Cowboy. Thankfully, the fight did not cause the Indian and the Cowboy to be injured, much to the relief of Omari.

How did proponents and opponents of slavery use similar concepts in their arguments?

It's interesting that both supporters and opponents of slavery drew upon Christianity to back up their arguments. For abolitionists, their opposition to slavery was nothing less than a moral crusade, a crusade based on the Christian principle of universal brotherhood. It's notable that many of the leading lights in the abolitionist movement were clergymen, and they sought to infuse the campaign to abolish slavery with a distinctively Christian flavor. In a society where just about everyone believed in God, it was important for abolitionists to convince people that they had divine sanction for what they were proposing.
For their part, supporters of slavery were equally adamant that they had God on their side. They pointed to numerous passages in scripture which they claimed endorsed slavery. To the advocates of the peculiar institution, slavery was part of God's plan. If certain races were slaves, they argued, it was entirely due to the will of God, and no man had the right to challenge it.

Smith argues that we recognize the humanity of others by doing what?

Author and philosopher David Livingstone Smith has explored the act of dehumanization and how individuals demean others. He outlines the ways in which people are put down, either through physical enslavement or by simple forms of emotional oppression and dehumanization. The attitudes one has for another dictate how that individual is treated, and Smith recognizes the necessity of valuing individual humans and their lives.
According to his work, recognizing the humanity of others involves being saddened by the death of every individual on the planet, regardless of any personal characteristics they have, good or bad. In doing so, you have evaluated and understood their humanity. You know their internal life was intrinsically valuable, and there is grief in their demise. If they were a good person, you are saddened that a good life is gone, and if they were not, you are saddened that they no longer have the opportunity to change their ways. Recognizing humanity inherently means being distressed by its loss.

What is Herbert White's Place in the Story?

Herbert White is young and full of life. He is always joking. Both his parents love him, his mother especially. He is the light of his parents' lives. When he is killed at the factory, it seems like an especially devastating blow because it is such an immense loss for such a measly sum of money. The people at Maw and Meggins may feel it is adequate compensation, but the Whites would not have sold their son for any amount of money. It suggests the awesome power of the supernatural forces that control people's lives. The parents never recover from the loss. Their lives are empty. Their son's absence is like a tangible presence in the household. The parents have become so accustomed to the company of their lighthearted son, with his cheerful voice and inexhaustible fund of jokes, that they feel they can almost see him and almost hear him. The whole story revolves around Herbert. He is "the life of the party." It is he who suggests wishing for two hundred pounds to pay off the mortgage. It is his death that seems to have brought the money to their doorstep. It is Mrs. White's insistence on her husband wishing for Herbert to come back to life which seems to account for that horrible knocking at the door. It is Mr. White's last-minute wish for the knocker to go away which seems to send Herbert off into oblivion forever.

Write a reflection on Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk "My stroke of insight" and make connections with the characters in Lord of the Flies.

In this TED talk, Jill Bolte Taylor describes in detail a brain hemorrhage that she suffered in 1996. In the talk, she describes how the brain is divided into two hemispheres—the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere—and she explains the function of each half. The left hemisphere in the brain, she says, is "all about the past and all about the future," and its purpose is to form the sense of self that we know ourselves by. The left hemisphere essentially creates our ego, our fundamental identity, from the collection of moments which make up our past and in anticipation of the moments which might make up our future. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, is "all about the present moment," and it processes information in the form of energy filtered through all of our senses.
At the end of the speech, Taylor says that we can choose which hemisphere to "step into" at any given moment. We can choose the consciousness of our left hemisphere where we become "a single individual," separate from everybody else, or we can choose the consciousness of the right hemisphere where we are connected to everyone and everything else through the energy that we all feel and decipher as sensations, where we, thus, can "be at one with all that is."
In Lord of the Flies, Jack and Ralph can be interpreted as representing the two sides of the human brain or, more broadly, the two sides of human nature. Jack represents the left hemisphere, which is all about the self and the projection of the self onto the world. Ralph (and also Piggy) represents the right hemisphere, which is all about realizing that we are connected to everyone else and that, as Taylor might put it, we are all a part of the same energy. Indeed, one of the morals of Lord of the Flies is that we should be less egocentric, less concerned with consolidating and bolstering the self, and more concerned with connecting to the energy that binds all of us together. This latter state of being is what Taylor, in her TED talk, calls nirvana: a Buddhist term meaning a total transcendence of the self and a consequent loss of suffering and desire.

How is Starbuck contrasted with Captain Ahab? Who do you think is right? Why?

In chapter 36, “The Quarter Deck,” Ahab tries to convince Starbuck to share his quest for vengeance against Moby Dick. Starbuck is shown to be a model whaleman and a hard-headed practical thinker. Ahab, on the other hand, is a man obsessed with vengeance who will stop at nothing until he has it. As Starbuck says, “I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance.”
Another difference between the two characters is their sense of morality. Starbuck represents a kind of conventional Christian morality; he is opposed to killing Moby Dick unless “it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow.” For Starbuck, the whale, as a “dumb brute,” has no responsibility for what it did to Ahab. For Ahab, however, the whale is representative of a darker kind of malignity that pervades the world. When Ahab encourages Starbuck to understand the “little lower layer” of his thinking, he suggests that reality is a kind of fake: he says, “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.” The idea that reality might be merely symbolic is something Starbuck cannot understand or accept. His only response is, “God keep me!—keep us all!”
Who is right? It is not really something that admits of right and wrong. One could argue that Starbuck is right, in that he rightly knows that Ahab’s vengeance would get their ship into trouble. On the other hand, Ahab’s vengeance against the whale is something he is driven to do. Whether it would be “better” if he did not follow this dream depends on what you mean by “better.” In a sense, it would have been better if the ship had not been destroyed, but in another sense Ahab’s quest has a certain nobility to it, the nobility of a personality struggling with the titanic issues of meaning and existence.

What is the lesson in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children about good and evil?

This is an exceedingly complex question, so I will discuss the roles of good and evil in Jacob’s life as a focal point.
Prior to his grandfather’s death, Jacob lives a monotonous life in Florida where his parents are oblivious to the dangers lurking around them. Jacob’s father dismisses the fantastical stories the grandfather had told Jacob—and Jacob’s father—as lies made up by a man who was never there for his family. Furthermore, his parents think Jacob is losing his sanity when he becomes obsessed with finding out what his grandfather’s cryptic last words really mean.
The evil that Abraham discussed goes beyond the Nazis he escaped as a child. The hollows and wites that seek to devour the peculiar children—Jacob among them—are representative of that evil in the world.
Jacob, being a force for good, defeats the chief wite Golan in this book. This shows that Jacob is able to conquer evil because of his innate goodness. Prior to visiting Cairnholm, Jacob didn’t realize the power he had not only as a peculiar but also as an individual whose actions can actually make an impact on the world. Jacob comes of age over the course of this text because he harnesses his power for good.

What does the fog reveal as it lifts in chapter 1?

The Red Badge of Courage is a novel published in 1895 about the American Civil by the American writer Stephen Crane. The story and first chapter opens with a fog lifting to reveal "an army stretched out on the hills." The exact passage is:

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors.

The lifting fog allows the army to see what had previously been hidden to them:

It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army’s feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.

It is interesting that Crane refers to the army here as "it." As the reader finds out there is no room for individuals and individual thought in the army, and in fact the main character, Henry Fleming, a private of the Union Army, longs to be wounded (wear a red badge of courage) so he can prove his bravery to the others.
The other interesting use of words is the word retiring to describe the lifting of the fog. Once it lifts the soldiers seem full of life:

He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend . . . To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliant campaign.

It is not until the men realize the reality of the campaign that they begin to quieten down.

When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of two score soldiers was deserted. He sat mournfully down. Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chimneys.

Almost as if he wants the fog to return and again shield his eyes from the awaiting enemy, Henry goes back to his hut "to be alone with some new thoughts."
https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/176/the-red-badge-of-courage/3196/chapter-1/

As dawn breaks and the fog dissipates, the opening scene of the story is suddenly revealed. The massed ranks of the Union army are encamped across the hills, trembling with eagerness at the imminent battle ahead. The lifting of the fog is ironic, because the fog of ignorance still remains; the soldiers are dead keen to start fighting, yet remain blissfully unaware of the horrors that lie in store.
To the likes of Henry Fleming, war is still just a big adventure, an opportunity for young men to prove their courage and manhood on the field of battle. As yet, Henry and his comrades haven't the faintest idea of what armed conflict actually involves. And though the earth has awakened with the dawn, the fog lifted, and the hills turned from brown to green, the young men encamped on those hills, chomping at the bit to start fighting, have yet to wake up to the harsh realities of war.

Why do the Gamemakers what to chase the tributes from their hiding places in The Hunger Games?

The Hunger Games are not just playing out inside the arena; they are being broadcast to every District and are required viewing for citizens. The Gamemakers are controlling certain aspects of the game to keep it "entertaining" for everyone back home. When Katniss finds herself in a tree at the end of chapter 12, she sees a wall of fire bearing down on her. She is forced to flee, as is every other tribute in hiding. She realizes that there have been no deaths that day and likely not any fighting, either:

The audience in the Capitol will be getting bored, claiming that these Games are verging on dullness. This is the one thing the Games must not do.

She realizes that all the individual tributes (with the exception of the Careers, who have a tenuous alliance) are all probably spread far and wide in the arena and are most likely hiding just like Katniss. The fire, then, serves to drive everyone out of hiding and force them into closer proximity to create conflict that results in deaths.
And the Gamemakers' twisted plan is quite effective in doing just that.

What is the narrator’s reaction to the use of the heat ray in The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells?

In Chapter 5, the Martians deploy the heat-ray, to devastating effect. The narrator is at first dumbfounded. He "stood staring," feeling nothing other than that "it was something very strange." When the narrator perceives the heat-ray moving towards him, he is initially "too astounded and stupefied to stir." He is only able to watch the heat-ray, or rather the bursts of flame which indicate the path of the heat-ray, while he stands "motionless, dumbfounded, and dazzled." The triplet in this last quotation emphasizes the extent of the narrator's helpless, paralyzing amazement. He realizes that if the heat-ray continues on its path, it will "inevitably have slain (him) in (his) surprise."
When the heat-ray and the "black, dome-like object" from which it emerged finally disappear, the narrator is left to reflect on a scene of darkness and desolation. He remarks that the scene was "dark almost to blackness," "grey and pale," and "suddenly void of men." The desolation, and also the stillness of the scene at this moment, reflects the despair of the narrator. Having just witnessed the spectacular and devastating effects of the Martian ray-gun, the narrator realizes just how powerful the Martians are. He suddenly feels a fear, "a panic terror not only of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me."

After the first Martian exits the cylinder, a deputation led by the Astronomer-Royal Stent makes the mistake of trying to make contact. They think that if they approach the Martians in peace, carrying a white flag, then they'll be safe. This turns out to be a catastrophic error of judgment, as Stent and the other men in the welcome party are killed by a heat-ray, the Martians' main offensive weapon.
The narrator's initial reaction is one of puzzlement rather than fear. He's too confused to be frightened, as he doesn't really know what's going on. It's only when people watching this scene of carnage from a distance start to panic and run that the narrator realizes what's happening and quickly joins them in trying to escape.

Describe how New Englanders' turn to the sea for their livelihood spurred other industries and transatlantic commerce.

New England's agricultural industry was severely limited for several reasons. First, fecund farmland was sparse because of the rocky terrain. Second, the growing season was short. In addition, the climate was too severe for large-scale agriculture.
New England was blessed with outstanding fisheries, however. Its cod-rich waters were the best in the world, and Europeans consumed a lot of cod. Whales were caught, too, and whale products were used to make perfume and other commodities.
The success of the fishing industry led to shipbuilding, and that created a market for timber, sawmills, rope making, and a myriad other businesses. Building a large ship took about five months, and it employed a multitude of different workers and craftsmen.
New England's prosperity enabled it to participate in what became known as the "triangular trade." One "triangle" in this trading relationship included the British West Indies and Britain. As the mother country, Britain sought to have the upper hand in this relationship by maintaining a favorable balance of trade. And British merchants demanded payment in specie.
Although the trade was perhaps unfair in some respects, New Englanders prospered, too. Its economy became much more diversified than that of the Southern colonies. In fact, some clergy worried that its great prosperity was an impediment to the region's spirituality.

Historically, New Englanders' turn to the sea for their livelihoods spurred a number of other industries as well as transatlantic commerce. Commercial whaling, for example, started in New England in the 1600s and continued right up until 1927, when the John R. Mantra whaling ship left New Bedford, Massachusetts, for its last whale-hunting voyage.
The raw materials obtained from whales was of great commercial value both domestically and abroad until the demand declined as petroleum-based products came into use in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Whale oil, however, remained the ideal lubricant for very delicate machinery and clockwork and was used for these purposes well into the twentieth century.
You might be surprised to learn that the whaling industry of New England supported the Industrial Revolution. Whale oil (made from rendered fat) was used to lubricate factory machinery before the invention of petroleum-based lubricants. A product called spermaceti (a substance taken from echolocation organs inside the heads of sperm whales), actually a kind of wax, was burned for light in lanterns and lighthouses and was in high demand both in the United States and in Europe. New England's spermaceti candles were also sold overseas.
Whalebone, which comes from baleen plates in the mouths of certain kinds of whales, is strong but flexible and was used to make such items as tools, buggy whips, umbrellas, corsets, petticoats, and collar stiffeners. As raw materials, whalebone and whale oil both supported the manufacturing industries of New England until the first half of the twentieth century when many factories from this area moved out to the Midwest.
Today whales are a part of New England's tourist industry in the form of organized whale watches.

When answering this question, you should be aware that, like all the other colonial zones, New England remained primarily agricultural. It was much more mercantile than the other colonial zones, but by modern standards, every colony was agrarian at its core.
That being said, New England saw the growth of a merchant class, which was very active in trading both with England and with the other colonies within North America and in the West Indies. In doing so, they patronized additional industries within the colonies. For example, because trade was primarily carried out by way of ships, shipbuilding became a major industry in New England.
New England shipping became a key part of Britain's trading network, and it was also a key contributor to the Triangle Trade (and with it, the slave trade).

While investigating mole ratios, a group of students collected data for the chemical reaction 2 NaOH(aq) + CaCl2 (aq) -> 2NaCl(aq) +Ca(OH)2 (s). The students wondered what would happened if an excess of NaOH was used. Their teacher approved a procedure in which solutions containing 3.00 g of NaOH and 2.10 g of CaCL2 were combined. Based on the quantities of these reactants, what amount of Ca(OH)2(s) is produced?

The balanced chemical reaction is as follows:
2 NaOH (aq) + CaCl2 (aq) -> 2 NaCl (aq) + Ca(OH)2 (s)
According to this chemical reaction, 2 moles of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) will react with 1 mole of calcium chloride (CaCl2) to produce 2 moles of sodium chloride (NaCl) and a mole of calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2).
When a substance is in excess quantity (which means it is present in a higher quantity than can be used in the chemical reaction), only the stoichiometric amount will be used, and the rest will be left over after the completion of the reaction.
To calculate if a substance is in excess in the given scenario, we will need to calculate the moles of the reactants and then check against the stoichiometric quantities needed for the reaction. The molecular masses of sodium hydroxide and calcium chloride are 40 gm/mole and 111 gm/mole, respectively.
3 gm of NaOH is given, which is equal to 3 gm / (40 gm/mole) = 0.075 moles of NaOH.
Similarly, the 2.1 gm of CaCl2 is equivalent to 2.1 gm/ (111 gm/mole) = 0.019 moles of CaCl2.
According to stoichiometry, 2 moles of NaOH will react with 1 mole of CaCl2. In other words, 0.019 moles of CaCl2 will react with 0.038 moles (= 2 x 0.019 moles) or 1.52 gm of NaOH. The leftover or excess amount of NaOH is equal to 0.037 moles (= 1.48 gm). In other words, about half the amount of NaOH will be left over after the reaction.
Each mole of CaCl2 that undergoes the given reaction produces one mole of Ca(OH)2. Since 0.019 moles of CaCl2 react, we can expect 0.019 moles of Ca(OH)2 as the product.
The molar mass of Ca(OH)2 is 74 gm/mole. In other words, about 1.4 gm (= 0.019 moles x 74 gm/moles) of calcium hydroxide will be produced at the completion of this reaction.
Similarly, we can expect 0.038 moles or 2.223 gm of NaCl as a product of this reaction.

What similarities are there between Roger and Simon in the Lord of the Flies?

William Golding's Lord of the Flies focuses on a group of boys who are stranded on an island after the airplane they are on crashes. The young boys find themselves on an uninhabited island and are left to fend for themselves when they realize there are no adults with them. Apart from these circumstances and their similar ages, there are few other commonalities between Roger and Simon.
Simon is viewed as the epitome of morality throughout the novel, and is commonly accepted as an almost Christ-like figure. His actions throughout the novel are motivated solely by good; he strives to do what is considered right, even if there is no benefit to him. Simon even offers up his own life in an effort to enlighten the other boys about the "beast" and assuage some of their fears.
Conversely, Roger acts as a foil to Simon's character. His actions often agitate or harm the other boys on the island; he seems to take great joy in inflicting pain on those around him. These actions culminate in Roger's choice to take Piggy's life.
Part of the brilliance of Golding's novel is its ability to demonstrate how easily one's actions can move from civil to savage. The characters of Simon and Roger appear similar on the surface, but the lack of control and authority on the island quickly leads them down separate paths.

What was threatening Western Europe after WWII?

Western Europe faced numerous threats both in the immediate aftermath and in the long term after World War II. One of the most immediate threats it faced was the chaos and lawlessness once the official fighting stopped. People had been used to constant violence for years, and it took time to restore law and order in many areas. Many people wanted revenge and retribution for the losses they had suffered. Criminals used the unrest and lack of policing to carry out unlawful activities. Prisoners freed from Nazi labor camps became drunk and disorderly, and there was a thriving black market for illicit goods. In the short term, in many places curfew had to be established and military law had to be imposed.

Disease and famine were threats in many areas after the war. There were also millions of refugees, displaced people who had lost their homes and possessions. A surge of anti-Semitism hit postwar Europe as local communities resisted when Jews who survived death camps came home to reclaim their properties. Single women, many of whom were often threatened by rape, and abandoned children had difficulties in assimilating into societies that were without sufficient populations of civilian men and no longer viably functioned. The Marshall Plan, through which the United States spent over $15 billion to help Europe recover after the war, helped to mitigate these threats by restoring food production, rebuilding transportation infrastructure, and stimulating economic growth.

In the long term, the greatest threat to Western Europe after World War II was the outbreak of the Cold War, the imposition of the Iron Curtain between the Western nations and the Communist East Bloc, and the perceived threat of invasion by the East Bloc. One of the ways Western Europe and the United States countered this threat was by the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, a military alliance meant to act as a deterrent to Soviet aggression.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/151464

https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/formation-of-nato-and-warsaw-pact

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1

What is the turning point of the plot in "O Pioneers" by Cather?

I would argue that the turning-point in the story is the murder of Marie Shabata and her young lover, Emil Bergson. Marie is an unhappily married woman who's been involved in an unconsummated love affair with Emil, the brother of Alexandra, the story's protagonist. One evening, Frank Shabata, Marie's husband, catches the two love-birds together in the orchard and, in a fit of drunken, jealous rage, shoots both of them dead. This is the turning-point, because it is the highest point of tension and drama in the story, whose resolution prepares us for the falling action and denouement.
The character who undergoes the most radical change in the wake of the double murder is Alexandra. She's worked tirelessly over the years to make a go of her late father's farm. She's tried so hard to make a life for herself and her family on the prairies at a time when so many other families have left to seek opportunities elsewhere. And yet, in the wake of her brother's tragic death, it appears that all that hard work, all that sweat and effort, and all those sacrifices, have ultimately been for nothing.

What sort of rights do men have in a civil society according to Edmund Burke in the middle of Reflections on the Revolution in France?

As it unfolded, even before the beheadings, the French Revolution was an unsettling development for supporters of monarchy. While the Enlightenment ideas of individual rights did enjoy widespread support, the imminence of anarchic chaos was alarming. The Anglo-English Edmund Burke, a member of Parliament, was among the most outspoken critics of the "tragi-comic" event. In urging caution and reform over revolution, he criticized not only the French actions but many of the underlying principles.
Burke included substantial discussion of "rights" as they figured in civil society. He wrote that civil society, if it were to be

for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule.

Concerned for the balance of rules and rights, he advocated the concrete over the abstract.

Burke pointed out that civil society provides certain guarantees, including justice, earnings, inheritance, aid in childrearing, and even consolation in death. However, he opposed the prior definition of an abstract, universally applicable concept of such guarantees. Rather, the specific, concrete ways of acquiring and safeguarding rights was a matter for social experience to be developed gradually through custom and law.

In particular, Burke did not support direct democracy.

[A]s to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society.

Burke's summation of the way of moderation is one of the most influential passages in the Reflections.

The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, in incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned [emphasis in original].

He advocated for a balance that would avoid extremes, and some would say favored inherited position of the governors—one of the foundation of monarchy—at the expense of the governed.
https://www.bartleby.com/24/3/4.html

Is there a way to view Ab in "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner as an empathic or sympathetic character?

It is pretty tough to find a way to view Ab Snopes as sympathetic. One might automatically begin to feel some sympathy for someone who has to eke out such a difficult living as he and his family do, moving all the time from place to place, but that sympathy disappears when we learn that Ab is basically a serial arsonist who beats his son for not being willing to lie more convincingly when Snopes is tried for burning his boss, Mr. Harris's, barn down.
After he's ordered to leave town, Ab says,

"I aim to. I don't figure to stay in a country among people who . . ." He said something unprintable and vile, addressed to no one.

He evidently has some grudge against the people he acts against, and maybe if we had some sense of why, we could feel more sympathy for him. As it is, his behavior toward his new boss, de Spain, seems totally unwarranted—he doesn't even know this man—and he purposely ruins Mrs. de Spain's rug and then burns down their barn. It is tough to sympathize with him and even tougher to empathize!

Where was the town described in chapter 1 located?

In chapter 1 of the book Silent Spring, the town is described as being "in the heart of America . . . in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms." There are also hills with orchards where foxes roam, and there are lots of flowers and plants along the roads.
The town also has a "flood of migrants" passing through, pools and streams that people fish in, and a famously abundant "variety of . . . bird life." The author then describes how this idyllic town became decimated by a mysterious "white granular powder" so that the plants and flowers withered, the fish died in the streams, and the trees bore no fruit.
Later in the chapter, the author writes that "This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America." In other words, the town described in chapter 1 is meant to represent all of the towns in America. The town in this story is what's called a microcosm, meaning that it's a small-scale representation of something much bigger. The author uses this town as a microcosm to represent all of America so that the reader can better empathize with the decimation that has occurred and will occur through the use of pesticides. We can all, after all, probably imagine something more easily on a small scale than on a much larger scale.

How did the Herman W. Block library come into existence?

In chapter 7 of the novel Because of Winn-Dixie, Miss Franny Block, the daughter of Herman W. Block, tells Opal the story about how the Herman W. Block Memorial Library came into existence. She explains that when she was a little girl, and Florida was "still wild" and "nothing but palmetto trees and mosquitoes so big they could fly away with you," her father said she could have whatever she wanted for her birthday.
Miss Franny explains that her father was wealthy, and because she loved to read, she decided to ask him for a library. She said, "A small little library would be wonderful." Opal is surprised that someone would ask for a "whole library."
Miss Franny points out that she asked for a "small one." Her vision was to have an "entire house filled with books." Her father grants her wish by building her a house, the very one they are in, and fills it with books. As a result, she became a librarian "at a very young age."
It's important to know that the reason Miss Franny is telling Opal the story is that she once had a bear visit the library, a memory that is stirred when she sees Winn-Dixie standing on his hind legs at the library window. Humorously, Miss Franny shares the experience of throwing a book at the bear, one she happened to be reading, War and Peace, a rather big book. The funny part is that the bear took the book with him.
It's also important to note that in chapter six, the reader gets the first details about the library. Opal assumes it will be a "big fancy place," but to her Both chapters show Opal's love for books.

The novel opens with a powerful discussion of the power of words and language. How does this textual choice help capture the reader's attention in the book Out of My Mind?

The reader is quickly drawn into the novel Out of My Mind with the discussion of something all readers have in common: language and words. Melody's love for words is lovely in its simplicity, and intriguing to the reader.
For as long as she can remember, Melody has soaked up words like a sponge, and she is passionate about words in a way that some children may be passionate for dance or sports or video games. She has learned from her parents the importance of words and their consequences.
It is this opening to the book that gets readers to think about their own experiences with words. It enthralls the reader to read of Melody's passion for words because it touches a part in each of us. We rely on words to make it through our world. We learn through words, we teach others with words. We express our innermost fears, hopes, and dreams with words.
As readers delving into the first few pages of Out of My Mind, we cannot help but be instantly at attention and eager to learn more about Melody. Through learning about her and her love for words and language, we are able to see our own world from a different point of view. We instantaneously begin to pay more attention to the words we read and write and even think. To see language through Melody's eyes makes it exciting and new, and not just something we would ordinarily take for granted. Words are elevated from the mundane to the magical, and readers will eagerly turn the pages to learn more.

How did Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola (Pico) contribute to Renaissance thinking?

Pico della Mirandola contributed to Renaissance thinking most notably in his The Oration on the Dignity Of Man. In this work, he shows a shift away from the medieval notion of describing humankind as fallen and sinful to, instead, exalting humans as the centerpiece and crowning glory of God's creation. This emphasis on the centrality of the human, referred to as humanism, is one of the most important attributes of Renaissance thinking.
In Pico's worldview, God is to be greatly honored and worshipped as the creator of the universe, of life, and of humankind. Nevertheless, the main light Pico shines is on humans. He focuses on humankind as made in the image of God and, therefore, as bringing to the earth some of God's immense glory—especially through the human capacity, derived from God, of rational thought. He buttresses his argument about humankind's goodness, intelligence, and worth with many quotes from Classical authors of Greece and Rome, such as Plato and Aristotle, revealing his perception that Christianity and "paganism" are not at odds but can be reconciled and synthesized, since they emanate from the same source.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of this shift to centrality of the human. It was the start of the end of abjection, the idea that all humans could do was bow to received authority because we are too fallen to do otherwise. Instead, Pico argues, we should celebrate "man's" achievements and continue to aspire to greater heights in what we can produce and create.

Pico's greatest contribution to the Renaissance was his attempt to reconcile a bewildering array of world-views, philosophies, and religious traditions to Christianity. This was the very essence of Renaissance humanism, which sought to present an elevated picture of humanity by drawing upon rediscovered pagan texts and then incorporating the insights of such close study into the dominant Christian world-view. It was believed by Pico and other Renaissance thinkers that, far from representing a threat to Christianity, such an ecumenical approach to the gaining of wisdom would strengthen and enrich it.
But Pico wanted to go one stage further: his boundless intellectual curiosity was such that he desired nothing less than a complete synthesis of all human knowledge. It was this breathtakingly ambitious undertaking which landed Pico in hot water with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. They believed that, in such a synthesis, the teachings of the Church would be, at best, watered-down, or at worst, marginalized. They were also deeply unnerved by Pico's regard for the Kabbalah, a collection of Jewish mystical texts.
One of Pico's accusers leveled the absurd accusation against him that Kabbalah was the name of a writer who'd written a number of impious works against Christ. This was complete nonsense, of course, but in any case, the Catholic Church felt that Pico had gone too far in drawing upon non-Christian traditions in his ceaseless quest for knowledge. Though Pico was ultimately defeated in that quest, the restlessly inquiring spirit he displayed in his works would inspire successive generations to push back the boundaries of human knowledge.

Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola (Pico) was a distinguished Italian, Renaissance philosopher who lived from 1463–1494. His contribution to Renaissance thinking came through his published works, including The Oration of the Dignity Of Man. This influential book was first written as a speech yet was not delivered. It was not published until 1496, several years after his death. This work is often considered the manifesto of Italian Renaissance philosophy.
Pico's great contribution to Renaissance thinking through his collected works was an influence on the view of human nature; his aim was to prove that all humanity has an inherent dignity. Pulling beliefs from Christianity, humanism, Islam, and Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), Pico claimed humans are the greatest creatures in all of creation because we have free will. While the rest of the created order is fixed in position, humans have the free will to descend into animal-like behavior or to ascend spiritually and intellectually into a higher order.
Pico offers philosophy as the key to ascending and claims it brings humanity into the highest form of existence and into communion with God, as set forth in Pico's 900 Theses (published in 1486). The Catholic church condemned his theses before he had a chance to defend them publicly; however, it had already been published and had a hand in influencing Renaissance thinking.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/action/cookieAbsent

Compare and contrast the three worlds of the post–World War II order. What was each world attempting to achieve? How successful was each one in achieving these goals?

After World War II, the world was separated into two geopolitical blocks: the Western bloc, which promoted capitalism, and the Eastern bloc, which promoted communism. Thus, the three-world model (the “three worlds” of the Cold War era) that emerged after the war was created to divide the countries of the world into three categories: the First World, the Second World, and the Third World.
The First World (a.k.a. the Western bloc) was led by the US and the North American and European countries that were aligned with NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The main goal and mission of the First World was to promote capitalism, industrialism, political stability, and socioeconomic development. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, the First World was no longer limited to countries that disapproved of the Soviet regime and instead included countries that were democratic, economically and politically stable, highly developed, modern, and industrially advanced.
The Second World (a.k.a. the Eastern Bloc) was led by the Soviet Union, China, and the countries that were aligned with the 1955 Warsaw Pact (formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance), which was formed as a counterpart to NATO. The main goal and mission of the Second World was to promote communism and socialism and to dominate Central and Eastern Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the Warsaw Pact countries joined NATO, and others were considered underdeveloped or developing countries.
The Third World included the neutral countries that were aligned with neither the First nor the Second World and the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Essentially, the three-world model was a product of the political tension that arose between the two global superpowers—the Soviet Union and the United States—after the Second World War, which is a period known in history as the Cold War. Today, the three-world model is considered outdated and archaic, and its modern theoretical revisions and definitions focus more on economic and ideological aspects instead of political ones. Thus, politicians, sociologists, and economists use the terms "developed countries," "developing countries," and "underdeveloped countries" to describe the political and socioeconomic climate of the world.

What are Destiny’s concerns when she hears where Romi met a boy?

Although Romi and her new friend Julio go to the same school, they only meet for the first time online. Instantly, they hit it off. Julio's new in town and already hates it, and he's desperately lonely so he's looking for someone to hang out with. As for Romi, she's distinctly unimpressed by the boys at school, who don't seem to have much in the way of intellectual curiosity. It's not surprising, then, that she naturally gravitates towards Julio, with his his obvious intelligence.
But when Romi tells her friend Destiny about her online chat with Julio, Destiny's far from impressed. With her firm belief in astrology and the power of fate, Destiny argues that two souls can only be brought together by mystical forces, not through technology. More sensibly, she also expresses concern that Romi might fall victim to the kind of creeps who, then as now, regularly lurk on internet chat sites, looking to prey on the vulnerable.

What was the cause and effect of Bacon's Rebellion?

Bacon's Rebellion was part of a political power struggle that took place in colonial Virginia in 1676. At that time, the colonists were experiencing all kinds of problems, from crop failures to disease to a sharp increase in the cost of imported goods. As is often the case in such situations, people started casting round for scapegoats to blame. And a number of Virginian colonists, led by a man called Nathaniel Bacon., Jr., found a convenient scapegoat in the form of local Native American tribes, whom he and his followers attacked, which inevitably invited retaliation.
In the midst of this growing conflict, the Governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, attempted to work out a compromise to prevent further bloodshed and disorder. He tried, but failed, to ensure the friendship of the Indian tribes while at the same time assuring the colonists that they represented no threat to them and their livelihoods. He did this mainly by setting up a commission which ruled that only certain select individuals would in the future be allowed to trade with the natives. This was supposed to make sure that arms and ammunition wouldn't fall into Indian hands.
Yet Bacon was furious at Governor Berkeley's policy. He openly accused Berkeley—his cousin by marriage—of favoritism, reserving lucrative trade deals for his cronies. Denied the opportunity to serve in the local militia, Bacon formed his own band of fighters, with himself as their self-styled general. As well as leading regular sorties against native tribes, Bacon and his men openly challenged Berkeley's authority as governor.
At first, Berkeley tried to buy Bacon off with concessions, but Bacon wouldn't play ball and he and his militiamen issued a Declaration of the People, which some historians have interpreted as a forerunner of the Declaration of Independence exactly one hundred years later. Whether this is true or not, a full-scale rebellion had broken out, with Bacon and his men ranged against the legally constituted authority of Governor Berkeley. In the ensuing conflict, the respective fortunes of the two sides ebbed and flowed. At first, Bacon gained the upper hand, taking Jamestown and burning it to the ground. But after Berkeley's men managed to infiltrate Bacon's forces and capture his fleet of ships, the tide began to turn.
Not long after Bacon and his men destroyed Jamestown, Bacon suddenly fell ill and died. This was the opportunity for Berkeley to assert his authority, which he did by having all the rebellion's ringleaders hanged. But the damage to Berkeley's authority had been done, not to mention relations between the Virginia colonists and the Native-American population. And after a government investigation, Berkeley was relieved of his position and recalled to England, where he died just one year after Bacon's Rebellion.

Why does Leonie treat her kids so poorly in Sing, Unburied, Sing?

Leonie has led a pretty troubled life, to say the least, and she passes her troubles on to her children. Thanks to the baneful influence of her husband, Michael, she started doing drugs, a nasty habit that only intensified when Michael was sent to prison. Yet despite the negative impact that Michael has had upon her life, Leonie still loves him dearly. In turn, this creates problems in her relationships with her children, as it seems to be the case that her love for Michael involves neglecting her parental responsibilities.
Furthermore, Leonie's trying to deal with traumas from her past, such as the murder of her brother Given, who appears to her in spirit form when she gets high on drugs. Leonie also finds it incredibly hard to deal with the systemic racial prejudice of the time and place in which she lives. All these factors combined make it difficult for Leonie to be anything like a perfect mother.

Can 'Of Mice And Men' be considered a realistic novella?

On the whole, you'd have to say yes. Of Mice and Men is meant to be, and largely succeeds in being, a realistic depiction of the plight of itinerant workers in California during the Great Depression. In writing his story, Steinbeck wanted to give a voice to those people he felt had been too long underrepresented in literature: the poor, the underprivileged, the dispossessed.
The unforgettable characters he portrays in Of Mice and Men are all the more so for being so eminently believable. George and Lennie represent many men, who in real life, were forced to travel from place to place in search of work. They have dreams, like just about everyone else in the story. But again like everyone else, their dreams somehow never seem to come to fruition. This is another aspect of the novella that makes it brutally realistic. At that time, and in that place, the American Dream still held a firm hold on the public's imagination, even among the very poorest members of society. Yet in portraying the chronic failure of any of the book's characters to achieve their dreams, Steinbeck is attempting to lay bare what he sees as the harsh reality of American life during the Great Depression: that no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you dream, the odds are stacked against those at the bottom of the heap.

What were the three religious practices found in Mecca before Muhammad's revelations?

The religious practices found in Mecca before the rise of Islam were of the sort that would typically be considered pagan. There were three deities who were most central to the Arabic practices at the time, sometimes referred to as the Daughters of God: The Goddess, al-Lat; The Mighty, or al-Uzzah; and Manat, a goddess of destiny. There were also many more minor deities beyond this. The Kaaba, which stands at the center of the great mosque at Mecca, was said to have been surrounded by 360 idols. These divine beings were not fully personified, but rather were represented symbolically, with worship directed, for instance, at large stones, or the morning sun. There were other beliefs in beings that may be understood as supernatural or divine as well, such as Jinn, or "the subtle ones."

The two main religions that influenced the development of Islam and which existed in Mecca in Muhammad's day were Judaism and Christianity. They were both monotheistic faiths. However, a large number of polytheistic faiths also flourished in the area, and polytheistic followers would make a pilgrimage each year to a stone building in Mecca called the Kaaba, which was filled with different deities. The Kaaba helped make Mecca the religious, cultural, and diplomatic center in the region even prior to the ascent of Islam.
Because it is monotheistic, Islam shares many similarities with Judaism and Christianity and accepts the religious prophets of those two faiths as its own prophets, claiming descent from Moses's son Ishmael and treating Jesus as an honored prophet, although not the son of God.
Islam is believed to have addressed barriers that kept people with a desire for monotheism from converting to either Judaism or Christianity. For example, it was not as exclusive a faith as Judaism and did not require circumcision. Further, it eradicated the confusion that Christianity presented with its trinity of three co-equal faces of God, which looked to many people very much like polytheism. Islam became a religion easy to convert to, and its monotheism was, from the start, clear-cut.
Muhammad made a vast number of converts to Islam in a short time period and, as polytheism died out, turned Mecca into a Muslim pilgrimage destination.

Three religious practices found in Mecca before Muhammad's revelations included the following:
Polytheism/Paganism: This was very widely practiced in Mecca before Muhammad began preaching. Polytheism in Mecca revolved around idolatry, with numerous idols being worshipped. Every tribe and house had their own idols, and the Kabah in Mecca was full of them. The Arabs at the time believed that the idols would bring them nearer to God and mediate with him for their sake. Though many idols were being worshipped, some idols of note include Hubal (placed in the middle of the Kabah), Manat (near the Red Sea), and Al-Lat (in the city of Taif near Mecca). During the conquest of Mecca later after the revelations of Muhammad, 360 idols were found around the Kabah; they were then removed and burned up.
Judaism: Jews migrated to Arabia in two major phases, once in 587 BC when the Jews left Palestine, and then again in 70 AD with the Roman occupation of Palestine. There were organized into various tribes and villages during the time of Muhammad. Some of the famous Jewish tribes included the Khabeer, Quraizah, and Qainuqa.
Christianity: Christianity entered Arabia via the Ethiopian and Roman colonists in the area. The Ethiopians managed to enter Yemen and even built a church with the aim of redirecting pilgrims from Mecca toward Yemen, but they were unsuccessful in their attempt. Followers of Christianity and Judaism were minor compared to the following of Arab Paganism.
Muhammad would later, at the age of 40, receive the revelation detailing the teachings of Islam. These teachings would change the face of Mecca forever.

If Germany had defeated Britain in 1940, do you think that they would have invaded the Soviet Union, in the sense that they required resources to keep going with a war that could possibly involve the USA? Or was it just about Lebensraum and a hatred of Communism and Barbarossa would have happened anyway?

There is no doubt that Adolf Hitler would have ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, irrespective of the outcome of the war against Great Britain. War with Britain was not one of Hitler’s overwhelming priorities. Invasion and annexation of Russia, in contrast, was central to his vision of Germany’s future. Hitler was imbued not only with a sense of German racial superiority, but with Germany’s destiny as the ruler of all of Europe.
Hitler’s views on race were intertwined with those of Germany's and Austria’s future, as Hitler believed very fervently that his goal of a purified Germanic race was threatened, in his mind, by two comingled factors: Judaism and Bolshevism. Hitler also believed that Germany and Austria required far more territory than these two nations possessed to accommodate their growths and to provide access to raw materials needed for industry (he envisioned the merging of the two nations, realized, temporarily, with the Anschluss). That the vast Russian plains were occupied by the Slavs and the Bolsheviks, and that the latter controlled through what he perceived as the pernicious influence of World Judaism, provided all the incentive Hitler needed to covet Russian territory. As the German leader remarked in a 1937 speech, there existed “an uncivilized, Jewish-Bolshevist, international league of criminals” based in Russia that threatened the world order and that had to be ruthlessly eliminated.
It is important to note that, while Hitler’s writings and statements throughout the 1930s were replete with examples of his hostile intent toward Russia, he was wary of more-blatantly threatening Russia, as its paranoid and equally ruthless leader, Joseph Stalin, was paying attention to developments in Germany and Hitler recognized the need to play East off against West for the time being. The Nazi-Soviet nonaggression agreement of August 1939, known for the two nations’ foreign ministers, Molotov and Ribbentrop, was a tactical measure on both dictators’ parts, negotiated to buy breathing time.
In conclusion, the invasion of Russia would have been launched irrespective of events in Great Britain. The concept of Lebensraum was synonymous with Hitler’s vision of the future, and the German leader’s intentions in this regard were only briefly, following the signing of the August 1939 agreement with Russia, rendered opaque to observers.
(See, also, page 123 of the translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf linked to below for a quote on the author's view of Russian land and its historic importance to "the new German Empire.")
http://der-fuehrer.org/reden/english/37-09-13.htm

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-august-1939

Are proteins exactly the same in all species?

Proteins in all species consist of the same fundamental amino acid building blocks. There are twenty main amino acids. The function of proteins is based on their structure and the amino acids that they consist of. These are integrally-related, because the structure is determined by the bonding between amino acids. DNA codes for the various proteins in all animals and plants. Proteins are very similar across species, because the function of proteins is so closely tied to their shape and amino acid ordering. If either of these properties deviate substantially, the efficiency of the protein or even its function can change.
Proteins typically change because of DNA mutations. The changes in the proteins and more fundamentally, the DNA, can either lead to increases or decreases in the survivability of a given animal. In cases where survivability increase, the mutated DNA and proteins become increasingly prevalent. The opposite is true when survivability decreases. These DNA mutations and protein changes occur within a single species as well as among all species. So, in general, proteins are not the same among all species. However, the amino acid building blocks are conserved across species and many of the changes in proteins between individuals or across species are very small because of the need to conserve function.
https://www2.chemistry.msu.edu/faculty/reusch/virttxtjml/proteins.htm

What does Mafatu's name mean?

On page 6, the author states that "Mafatu" means "stout heart" in Polynesian. Mafatu's father gave him this name expecting him, as the son of the Great Chief of Hikueru, to make him proud with his shows of bravery and courage. Instead, Mafatu proves such a disappointment to him that he comes to view his son as a coward.
Mafatu is afraid of the most essential aspect of tribal life on Hikueru: the sea. He can't fish and he can't go out on boats. Much to Matatu's distress, he is restricted to staying at home with his uncaring stepmother.
One day Mafatu decides he's had enough and must face what he calls "Moana, the sea God." Sneaking out of his house with a canoe, he sets forth to overcome his fears and finally live up to his name.

Please explain the poem "The Triumph of Life."

"The Triumph of Life" is a reflection of man's eternal struggle against the force of life its self. Shelley eludes to the idea that we live within a construct where everything is not always as it seems. Often, the triumph of victors runs parallel with the horrific defeat of a less prevailing force and morality isn't often the main component. Shelley wants us to realize that we should remain keen on our true path in life and not be seduced into worshipping the false idol of triumph when it means overall suffering and negativity for the majority in the end. Why is this significant? Because everyone's spirit, even the victors and the spectators cheering along the sideline end up with a corrupted, broken essence in the end when they allow their perception of life to triumph over them esoterically.

In "The Triumph of Life," Shelley shows us how, throughout history, the human spirit has often been crushed by life itself. In ancient Rome, triumphs were large, lavish processions staged to celebrate a military victory. They were elaborate affairs, with long lines of captive slaves from the vanquished enemy dragged along in their wake. This is an appropriate metaphor for how Shelley sees life itself. Life triumphs over the human spirit just as completely as the Roman legions triumphed over their enemies. For Shelley, life is a "painted veil" that conceals more than it reveals. Like a Roman triumph, it is a colorful pageant which successfully disguises its crushing of the human spirit. The crowds that throng the triumph's route may cheer, just as we may derive a superficial enjoyment of life. But their spirits—and ours—have been crushed just as surely as the sad procession of vanquished slaves paraded during a Roman triumph.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45143/the-triumph-of-life