Describe Walter Cunningham's family and explain their socio-economic status.

The Cunningham family can be described as poor, but respectable. While the Ewells are universally despised in Maycomb for being no good, lazy "white trash," the Cunninghams are further up the social scale on account of the fact that they're hard working. They may not have much in life, but what they do have comes from the sweat of their brow.
With their hard-working attitude comes a fierce pride and self-reliance. Unlike Bob Ewell, they wouldn't dream of accepting a welfare check or anything they might construe as charity. That's why Walter Cunningham always opts to pay Atticus for the legal work he does for him, even if it it's in stove-wood or hickory nuts. No matter how poor they may be, the Cunninghams will always pay their way, even if it's in kind, rather than cash.

What are the predominant themes in "Of Plymouth Plantation"?

Aboard the Mayflower in 1620, William Bradford was responsible for recording the tenets of the “Mayflower Compact.” These principles would serve as the guidelines in the soon-to-be new community of Plymouth, in what would one day become the state of Massachusetts.
The document espoused, in part, the following:
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, 1620
From 1630 until 1647, Bradford recorded the hopes and dreams, successes and failures of the colony. Here are a few of the themes that emerged over the seventeen years of Bradford’s meticulous documentation.
God’s Justice:
In Book I, Chapter IX, Bradford tells the tale of two men who made the Atlantic crossing on the Mayflower. One, he recalls, was a “very proud and very profane young man… who would always be contemning the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous execrations.”
God was not indifferent to the young man’s abuses. “It pleased God,” Bradford recounts, “to smithe this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and was so himself the first that was thrown overboard...[The people] noted it to be the just hand of God upon him.
God Rewards Endurance of Trials:
Bradford goes through a long discourse of the suffering the first Puritan colonists but is careful to give thanks to God, who smiles on his people for their faith. For example, in Book I, Chapter X, Bradford describes an attack by the Indians, but the men were able to recover their arms and survive the melee. “Afterwards,” he writes, “they gave God solemn thanks and praise for their deliverance.”
Dangers of Prosperity:
In Book XXIII, he addresses concerns about prosperity. In Bradford’s estimation, nothing good could come from the community becoming too materially successful. Money and goods, he believed, would lead people away from God. Within the boundaries of Plymouth, the people policed the morals of one another; if geographically apart, he warned, the community would fray: Should this happen, “the church must also be divided, and those that had lived so long together in Christian and comfortable fellowship must now part and suffer many divisions.”

How does Bradbury use diction to convey the tone in the exposition of "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The diction in the exposition of "There Will Come Soft Rains" creates an immediate contrast between the technology running the house and the ominous emptiness within it.
On one hand, the voice of the house is pleasant and helpful. It "sings" its reminders and even presents them in an upbeat and playful voice: "Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock!" It provides a loving reminder of an anniversary and friendly reminders to pay various bills. The sing-song reminders continue as the voice of the house provides a weather update: "Rain, rain, go away; umbrellas, raincoats for today..." The word choice as used to characterize the house as engaging, cheerful, and helpful.
In contrast, the diction used to characterize the house itself is quite different. The house lays empty. The clock "[repeats] its sounds into the emptiness." The breakfast stove "hisses" and "ejects" toast, eggs, bacon, coffee, and milk. It is noted that there are no slamming doors and no heels running across carpets, and only the rain creates sounds in a completely desolate house.
This contrast based on carefully selected diction creates a striking image of all that is wrong. Technology was created for human use, and without it, everything is rendered meaningless. The technology of the house makes great effort to continue in its mission to serve, but its purpose is now gone. Bradbury uses italics to further show how diction creates a sharp division between the intended function and the actual reality of this technologically-driven house.

Diction is the author's style of writing, the language they choose to use. Exposition is the background a story needs to supply to make sense.
In "There Will Come Soft Rains," Bradbury uses lyrical or poetic diction to convey a tone of poignancy (sadness) and futility as the house goes about the daily tasks meant to make life easy for its owners. The house has no way to know that the family it serves has been annihilated in what appears to have been a nuclear war. Bradbury relies on imagery, description that appeals to the five senses of sight, hearing, sound, taste, and smell, to convey the tone of sadness that permeates the story. For example, we learn that

The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness . . .

We can picture the water, described in gentle, lyrical, positive terms: "golden" and "bright" in the soft air. This makes it all the sadder when we learn, through another set of images, that the family is dead:

The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

In the quote above, we can see exactly the kind of ordinary activities the family was engaged in when the nuclear bomb hit. This description brings to life the tragedy of their surprise deaths. Bradbury doesn't tell us something bad has happened: he shows it to us.

How did Hitchcock create suspense in Murder!

Suspense in storytelling is defined as an audience's anxiety regarding what might happen next, usually regarding the fate of one or more of the characters. For example, when the protagonist is waiting on news from the doctor, unsure if the prognosis will be good or bad, this is an example of suspense. In a thriller, the audience is also in suspense when the protagonist's safety is threatened by the villain.
In Murder!, the suspense mainly comes from the uncertainty of Diana's future: will she be hanged for a crime she did not commit or will Sir John be able to uncover the true culprit before the execution date? The audience's concern for Diana leaves them anxious, hoping everything will turn out alright and that justice will be served. The time limit heightens the audience's fear that Sir John will not be able to solve the mystery in time. Suspense also comes from the audience's earnest desire to find out who committed the murder and why.

Where were the soldiers going in "The Charge of the Light Brigade"?

This poem is actually based on historical events, and its subject matter is the charge of British soldiers into enemy territory in southern Crimea during the Crimean War. Literally, the British soldiers were going towards Russian forces that had been taking their guns. However, the author emphasizes a more metaphorical and significant setting in the poem; this setting is one he describes as the "valley of Death." When the author says that six hundred men were headed towards this valley, he means to say that many of the soldiers are marching towards certain death during this dangerous military action. Besides this dark description detailing where many of the soldiers are tragically headed, the author also gives other metaphorical descriptions that pertain to these men's fatal destination; this can be seen when he hints that many of the fighters are riding towards the "jaws of Death" and the "mouth of hell."

Why is Shakespeare considered wicked in the poem "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum"?

The speaker of the poem describes Shakespeare as "wicked" in the first line of the third stanza. That stanza reads,

Surely, Shakespeare is wicked, the map a bad example.
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal—
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.
All of their time and space are foggy slum.
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.

We also hear a reference to Shakespeare in the second stanza; here are the relevant lines:


Shakespeare's head,
Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.
Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map
Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these
Children, these windows, not this map, their world,
Where all their future's painted with a fog,
A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky
Far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.

Given the imagery and diction surrounding the mentions of Shakespeare, we can infer what makes Shakespeare a "wicked" figure for this poem's speaker. Shakespeare writes about worlds that are "cloudless at dawn," where "ships and sun and love" are common occurrences. The speaker worries that the children's knowing about the existence of these things will "tempt them to steal" in order to escape the "cramped holes" and "endless night" that define their world. For the speaker, showing the children all the things they don't have is cruel; ships sailing across seas on a map are irrelevant to children who live in "slums as big as doom" and are starving, as evidenced by their wearing "skins peeped through by bones." In essence, Shakespeare dangles before these children that which they cannot have. It would make more sense to decorate the classroom with maps that more realistically display the conditions of the slums so as not to tease the children with the impossible.

All is not lost in this poem, though; the speaker does appeal to the government and to us (the reader) to work so that these maps could maybe become a possibility for these children. Rather than limiting their lives to the "catacombs" of the slums, the poem argues in the fourth stanza, we should fix the education system so that school will "show the children to green fields, and make their world / Run azure on gold sands."

How did Jimmy Valentine manage to get our of jail without serving the full term?

Jimmy Valentine only serves ten months of a four year sentence for safe-cracking, but then he had expected to serve only three months at the longest. We're told that Jimmy has quite a few friends on the outside, and the implication is that they must be socially prominent individuals. After all, Jimmy receives a pardon from the Governor himself, a rare honor indeed.
When the warden meets with Jimmy before his release, the convict amuses the warden with his continued protestations of innocence. If Jimmy really had been set up for the crime which landed him in prison, says the warden, then maybe it was because he wouldn't provide an alibi for fear of compromising a prominent member of society. This would appear to suggest that, when he was arrested for his crime, Jimmy kept his mouth shut to protect a very important person. If indeed that is the case, then Jimmy's early release could be seen as a reward for his silence.