What did Tiger go to the road construction company to do in A Brighter Sun?

In the novel A Brighter Sun, Tiger goes looking for a job at the road construction company. Having tired of working as a planter and, more importantly, tired of poverty, he decides that he has a greater calling for his life and resolves to change his status. Thus, he joins a road construction company when the Americans come through around wartime and need roads built.
Because of his knowledge—slightly higher than those around him, as he is able to partially read and write—he is given a position with some status at the construction company. He is a surveyor and has some limited authority over the others in his position. This job begins to give him some of the respect and higher income he felt he needed to achieve a better status.

How does Mary Shelley get us to sympathize with a monster? Where does she succeed and fail? Why does she do this?

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein creates moral tension between the two central characters: Victor Frankenstein, a young Genoese science student who has assembled and animated a creature using dead bodies, and the unnamed creature he creates. While the opening of the novel builds considerable animosity toward the character of the creature through the eyes of Victor, the creature's own description of his struggle to join humanity and his mistreatment at the hands of his creator and others leads to a more complicated portrait of his emotional landscape and moral choices. While the novel does not suggest that all his actions are defensible (for example, his murder of Victor’s younger brother is not excused), it does raise the question of the extent to which the trauma he has endured can make us sympathetic to the deep sorrows he expresses and the rage with which he responds.
Frankenstein is an epistolary novel (a novel told through letter writing) in which the stories of individual characters are often told through retellings by other characters in and beyond the letters of Captain Walton to his sister. When Walton first encounters Victor Frankenstein in the icy waters through which Walton hopes to discover passage to the North Pole, Frankenstein's own story comes to dominate the novel, and the frame narrative of Walton's expedition moves to the sidelines. As a result, the early descriptions of the "monster" Victor has created are told only by Victor himself, whose disgust with the creature becomes the reader's first emotional barometer for evaluating the character.
This changes dramatically in chapter 10, in which Victor encounters his creation. While Victor expresses rage at the murders the creature has committed, the creature, in turn, demands that Victor hold himself accountable for his choice to abandon his own creation upon first sight. In a directly stated allegory for human paternal abandonment, the creature tells the story of his own confused and terrified quasi-infancy, in which, without his creator, he fumbles into the nearby forest alone:

It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half frightened, as it were, instinctively, finding myself so desolate. . . . I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could distinguish, nothing; but feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept.

Upon encountering this, the novel's reader—perhaps for the first time—is asked to evaluate the impact of Victor's abandonment on his vulnerable pseudo-child.
The novel further makes room for sympathy for the creature as he discovers the dangerous way humans respond to his physical body, whereupon he hides in the cottage of a French family: a brother and sister named Felix and Agatha; their aging father; and, later, Felix's wife. As he slowly learns language by eavesdropping on their conversations, the creature develops a strong attachment to the family. He begins to crave acceptance from them, and fantasizes that he can earn—through hard study—a place in their hearts:

My thoughts now became more active, and I longed to discover the motives and feelings of these lovely creatures; I was inquisitive to know why Felix appeared so miserable and Agatha so sad. I thought (foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving people. . . . I formed in my imagination a thousand pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me. I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour and conciliating words, I should first win their favour and afterwards their love.

This combination of intellectual maturation and deep affection for the family introduces to the reader a level of emotional complexity in the creature which contradicts the earlier portrayals of him as wholly demonic. In chapter 15, when the creature is attacked by the family during his attempt to bond with them, his initial pain at being abandoned by Victor is redoubled. Using the notebook he found among Victor's possessions in his first hours of life, the creature begins to plan systematic and murderous revenge against his creator.
This turn toward violence, while not exonerated by the novel, merits evaluation in the context of the creature's fuller emotional landscape. The novel ends with the creature, in the wake of Frankenstein's death, expressing deep remorse for his actions and entangled in his complicated love for Victor and anger toward himself:

But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.

The novel does not neatly tie up the moral conclusion of this complicated relationship. Both characters leave the story in the novel's final moments (one through death and one through self-imposed exile), unable to undo the choices they have made and anguished by the consequences of those choices. In this way, in both their sympathetic attributes and their unforgivable ones, Victor and the creature end the novel most closely resembling one another.

How do citizens find their matching spouses in The Giver?

Jonas's uniform, highly structured society is founded on the principles of Sameness and tightly controlled by the Committee of Elders. The Committee of Elders is responsible for making every significant decision in the community, which includes controlling the birthrate, matching spouses, organizing households, and deciding specific occupations for each citizen in the community. In Jonas's society, independence and human agency are virtually nonexistent. Citizens do not get to choose their spouses and must apply for a spouse. After applying for a spouse, the Committee of Elders carefully examines the citizen's personality traits and compatibility factors in order to choose the perfect, most compatible partner for them. The citizens have absolutely no say in who they marry and the Matching of Spouses is controlled by the Committee of Elders. Once a couple is matched, they are monitored for three years before they are allowed to apply for a child, which is also out of their control and chosen by the Committee of Elders.

In The Giver, everything is controlled, from what jobs the citizens have to how many children they can raise. One example of this is the ceremony called the Matching of Spouses. The Committee of Elders, who run the society, oversee these kinds of ceremonies. Just like they determine what job each twelve-year-old is best suited to, they also assign spouses. The Committee of Elders considers each person's personality, as well as "disposition, energy level, intelligence, and interests." A person can apply for a spouse, and it may take a long time before the Committee of Elders decides upon a suitable match. They want the husband and wife to complement each other.
Once a pair has been married and observed for three years, they may apply for children. They can be granted one male child and one female child, who are birthed by Birth Mothers.
In this society, citizens don't have choice, because the Committee fears that people will choose wrong. They cannot choose who they marry. Their spouse is assigned to them.

After Rikki-tikki-tavi kills Karait, how does he feel?

Prior to killing Karait, the young mongoose named Rikki-tikki-tavi has encountered the big black cobra Nag and his "wife," Nagaina. He is feeling quite proud of himself at this time and is increasing in confidence because he is able to avoid an attack from the rear by Nagaina.
Rudyard Kipling spends time in this story from The Jungle Book developing the character of Rikki-tikki-tavi. He explains that it is the character of a mongoose to not be afraid of anything.

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is "Run and find out," and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.

Rikki-tikki-tavi was raised by his mother to know the purpose of his life was to kill and eat snakes. She also taught him how desirable it is to live in the house of men, so Rikki quickly bonds with the family that saves him.
After his encounter with Nag and Nagaina, Rikki encounters Karait. The narrator tells readers that Karait is more dangerous than Nag and Nagaina because his body is so small. If Rikki misses or strikes Karait in the wrong place, he could die. Before the encounter, Kipling explains that the idea that a mongoose knows about a magic herb to protect it from a snake bite is a myth. All they have is their courage and quickness in defense against an attack from a snake.

He went away for a dust bath under the castor oil bushes, while Teddy's father beat the dead Karait. "What is the use of that?" thought Rikki-tikki. "I have settled it all"; and then Teddy's mother picked him up from the dust and hugged him, crying that he had saved Teddy from death, and Teddy's father said that he was a providence, and Teddy looked on with big scared eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the fuss, which, of course, he did not understand.

This passage explains how Rikki is feeling after killing Karait. He doesn't understand why Teddy's father strikes at the snake, because he knows with total confidence that he killed the snake himself. He also doesn't understand Teddy's mother's crying. The parents think that it has been divinely ordained that Rikki has come into their lives to keep their family from the danger of snakes. But to Rikki, he's simply doing what mongooses do—and that is killing snakes. He thinks about eating Karait after killing him, which his mother taught him to do, but the family is keeping him well fed with eggs, bananas, and raw meat, so he is satisfied, and decides that eating the snake will only slow him down.

After he has killed Karait, we are told that Rikki-tikki-tavi is "thoroughly enjoying himself." He doesn't seem to experience any guilt or remorse for killing the snake. On the contrary, however, we are told that the snake is very dangerous and could have done significant damage to the family. Rikki-tikki-tavi seems to draw impulsively upon his instincts as a mongoose, knowing that he should not eat the whole snake because this would make him full and would slow him down. Instead, he springs onto the snake's back and delivers a bite which paralyzes him, and then leaves the snake. Feeling that he has settled the matter, he is puzzled by Teddy's mother's screams, but enjoys the subsequent petting and fuss he receives for having dispatched the dangerous snake and saved Teddy from death. He doesn't understand why he is being petted, as to him the killing of the snake was simply instinctive and not a valorous act, but he enjoys it all the same.

Why do you think the Akkadians and other invaders adopted Sumer's culture?

I believe that the Akkadians adopted Sumerian culture because it was considered to be more sophisticated and advanced compared to theirs. Sumer was viewed as the place where civilization began. Sumerians had developed a writing system and took part in the development of architecture, sciences, and mathematics. For example, they built walled cities that were characterized by public buildings, unconventional and innovative water systems, and agricultural land. In addition, Sumerians had the cuneiform writing system, which was later adopted and used to develop the Akkadian writing system.
Akkadians moved to the south of Mesopotamia, where they took control over Sumer. As with many invasions throughout history, it is likely that the Akkadians adopted Sumerian culture because it made them more powerful and dominant compared to their neighbors in the region.

How do the constant bird references fit into Cervantes's theme of Chicano identity?

"Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway" is a poem by Lorna Dee Cervantes. Cervantes was born in San Francisco with Mexican and Native American ancestry. Much of her writing deals with themes of identity, especially as she considers what it means to be Chicano.
In this poem, she talks about her mother and grandmother, and the different advice they gave her. Birds are often a symbol of freedom. In her poem, I believe that they they can symbolize beauty, hope, and/or renewal.
The first reference to birds comes in the third section with the mention of seagulls. Before this, at the end of the second section she says:

Myself: I could never decide.

She then describes the seagulls as having "indecisive beaks." Based on these lines, it might indicate that the speaker sees herself in the seagulls, and possibly connects the flocks of birds to the "flock" of the women in her family.
The male mockingbirds in the third section are a way for the speaker's grandmother to talk about the missing men in her life without having to focus on the negative: the beautiful image of mockingbirds "singing" for their wives is used in contrast to mention of the drunken man who left.
The image of mockingbirds returns again at the end of the fifth section, and again it feels like an attempt to find beauty despite the pain.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lorna-dee-cervantes

How does the story "A Rose for Emily" exemplify modernism?

The story exemplifies the tension between the New South and the Old, between a world of certainty and order and the much more chaotic modernist world, where all the old uncertainties have been undermined.
We see this tension illustrated right throughout the story. Miss Emily represents the old world, and she is placed on a pedestal by the townsfolk as the last surviving link to a supposedly more gracious past. Yet modernity cannot be stalled forever. The town needs to function and taxes raised for that precise purpose. This means that Miss Emily must contribute her fair share. However, because of her exalted status in town, Emily is able to cut a sweetheart deal with the local authorities which means she doesn't have to pay any taxes. That's definitely a win for the Old South.
Another win is Miss Emily's being able to buy rat poison without specifying the precise purpose for doing so. Modern laws require her to do precisely that, but Emily triumphs in her brief battle of wills with the pharmacist and once again gets a pass.
Modernism eventually triumphs over the forces of the Old South, but by then it's too late. It's only when the source of that revolting stench emanating from the Grierson residence is finally revealed that the modern world triumphs over the old. We can see this as a prime illustration of a key aim of modernist literature, namely to reveal what's really lurking beneath the surface of the ostensibly ordered, respectable world in which we live.