According to the essay "Why I Write," what are the reasons that one must write for the sake of themselves and society?

George Orwell is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His novels, novellas, essays, and journalistic output have inspired countless writers who came after him. His essay "Why I Write" is a favorite among aspiring writers. The essay not only articulates Orwell's genesis and motivations as a writer, it also serves as a guide for those wanting to use the literary arts for social change and political expression.
Orwell is famous for his criticisms of the British Empire's imperialist foreign affairs ("Shooting an Elephant"). He is also an observant critic of government control (1984 and Animal Farm) and outdated social structures (Keep the Aspidistra Flying).
In "Why I Write," Orwell states that he is left with "facing unpleasant facts." In the essay "Shooting an Elephant," Orwell tells the story of being an officer in Burma and how he had to deal with the unpleasant facts of being part of an imperial government. These types of experiences helped him develop his writing style and inspired the recurring topics in his later works.
Orwell suggests that writing and social commentary cannot be divorced and concludes that an author writes out of a primal need. As humans, we react to external stimuli and experiences, and writing is a medium in which to articulate those experiences. It is similar to a feedback loop on a circuit board. An input, such as experiencing the authoritarian oppression of government, will eventually lead to an output, which in Orwell's case is writing.
Orwell also talks about the revolutionary nature of writing. As a journalist himself, he opines that journalists of his time are concerned by the greater matters of politics, social issues, and economic disparity. For this reason, he indirectly advises young writers to not only write for themselves (i.e., out of a need for expression), but also to contribute positive change to society.
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/06/25/george-orwell-why-i-write/

What were Franklin Pierce's major accomplishments?

Franklin Pierce was the fourteenth president of the United States. He served from 1853 to 1857. Although he was liked by both the North and South during his campaign, he lost that popularity while serving in office. His biggest accomplishment was the Gadsden Purchase, in which he bought 30,000 square miles of land from Mexico for $10 million to provide a route for the Transcontinental Railroad. This land would later become southern Arizona and New Mexico.
Under his presidency, Commodore Matthew Perry signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with Japan, which opened ports for United States trading and created a United States consulate in Japan. Pierce also attempted to purchase Cuba but was unsuccessful in doing so. One of his most controversial pieces of legislation was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed both states to enter the Union without defining their slave status beforehand. This directly refuted the Missouri Compromise and was another factor that led to the Civil War.

How does Eliot explore suffering and hope in The Waste Land and Other Poems?

Various characters in The Waste Land suffer from the loss of common meaning and shared heritage brought about by the increased atomization of post-war Western society. The typist, for example, has a brief sexual encounter with her lover that is entirely devoid of meaning as well as joy. In this rapidly fracturing society, people are separated from each other, occupying their own little worlds where they're forced back on their limited emotional and intellectual resources.
For some, this may seem liberating, but not for Eliot. He sees the radical separation of human beings from each other and from their shared cultural heritage—the heritage of what used to be called Christendom—as causing great spiritual suffering. People no longer know who they are; they're forced back on themselves, drawing upon their newfound freedom to create their own identities. But such identities cannot provide much in the way of stability for very long. Cut off from their heritage, each other, and most importantly of all, from themselves, people in the modern world find themselves trapped in a seemingly never-ending spiritual malaise.
Worse still, there doesn't appear to be much hope in this bleak cultural landscape. All that can be done is to retrieve as many of the broken fragments of Europe's cultural achievements as possible and see in them a possible way forward. On Eliot's reading, this is the only way that modern man can possibly escape from his present predicament. Whether he chooses to do so is another matter entirely. Nevertheless, so long as we can shore our fragments against our ruins, there is still hope, however remote, of redemption from the moral, intellectual, and spiritual sickness with which modern man is afflicted.

Compare Harappa and Mesopotamia.

The Harappan or Indus Valley Civilization spanned the northwest region of South Asia and lasted for the better part of 2000 years from around 3300 BC to 1300 BC. Along with Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, it formed one of the three earliest known civilizations. Though extensive trade routes developed between Harappa and Mesopotamia, there were a number of differences between the two civilizations. For one thing, Mesopotamia was relatively rich in precious metals. Harappa wasn't, which is why it had to import a lot of its metals from Mesopotamia and elsewhere. Indeed, it was the trade in precious metals that was the main driver of commerce between the two civilizations.
Yet in other respects, the Harappans were considerably more advanced than Mesopotamia. They developed a sophisticated system of weights and measures, one of the first uniform systems to be established anywhere. They were also well advanced in the measurement of time. Harrapan civilization was renowned for its writing system, which was based on a complex symbolic script. The Mesopotamians, by contrast, used a more prime cuneiform system of writing, carving crude, wedge-shaped marks into clay tablets using a stylus.

How would you respond to “Why We Crave Horror Movies” by Steven King?

King's Why We Crave Horror Movies looks deep into the human psyche in order to make its analysis. As a result, his conclusions may be as disturbing as a horror movie itself. King claims that all humans are, to a degree, mentally ill: this mental illness surfaces as a desire for horror as well as sick jokes. According to him, we wish to see the reality of our world bent to produce pain, perversion, or other unnatural phenomena that we cannot observe in real life.
King's analysis is certainly not scientific: he does not plunge through medical data or statistics about the prevalence of mental health in the United States. As such, his essay can be considered speculative and is thus subject to critique.
The bias of King himself should also be considered. As an author who makes his living by writing horror novels, he is certainly encouraged by this appetite, whatever its roots. It does not necessarily matter to King whether his analysis is accurate, so long as it supports his own livelihood. While he has a strong understanding of his audience and the desire for horror, he may be drawing the wrong conclusions, much in the same way that a writer of historical fiction might draw the conclusion that people crave to return to the past.

Why was the mother angry with little Francis in The Swiss Family Robinson?

In The Swiss Family Robinson, the family is marooned on an island. They are very fortunate to land on the island because it provides them with a lot of living animals and food. Unlike other desert island narratives, this story follows the successful colonization of an uninhabited island.
The family has six members: William, Elizabeth, and their four sons. Franz, or Francis, is the youngest of the children. His place as the youngest child also makes him the most closely attached to Elizabeth, who is continuously looking out for his well-being and happiness. The older boys tend to gravitate towards their father, but Francis is always helping his mother.
In chapter 3 of the novel, Francis is helping his mother start a fire by gathering sticks. He goes off by himself to find more sticks for their fire, and when he returns, he is chewing on something he found on the way. The story says,

Just then little Francis came up with a large bundle of sticks, and his mouth full of something he was eating with evident satisfaction.
"Oh, mother!" cried he, "this is so good! So delicious!"
"Greedy little boy!" exclaimed she in a fright. "What have you got there? Don't swallow it, whatever you do. Very likely it is poisonous! Spit it all out this minute!" And his anxious mother quickly extracted from the rosy little mouth the remains of a small fig.

Elizabeth is distraught because she is frightened by the possibility of Francis being poisoned by eating something he finds in the wilds of the island. She tells him that he is “greedy” because at its heart, the story is a morality tale, and the parents often act as paragons of virtue that correct their wayward children.
It ends up that Francis finds a grove of figs that the family can eat. The anger his mother feels is derived from love and concern, which fits with how she treats him in the story, but it is interesting because the parents rarely get visibly angry with their children in the story.

In chapter 2, what does Lucy experience during her trip to see the animals? In other words, what unspoken realization does she come to when seeing the animals?

In life, as in literature, losses can take many forms, and not all of them are physical losses. In the memoir Autobiography of a Face, Lucy experiences many losses in her life, including the loss of part of her jawbone, which was taken to save her life when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Because she is taunted and ostracized by the people around due to her disfigurement, Lucy turns to animals to find comfort, as she knows there will be no judgment in their eyes and no painful taunts or jeers from their mouths. Lucy loses much of her apprehension and self-consciousness when she is around the animals and acquires a quiet bravery in their place. She realizes that she can cast aside her pretense and be her true self with the animals. She also comes to realize that companionship can come in many forms, and while she may never be accepted by her peers, she will always be taken for just who she is by animals.