How was the slave ship a rape culture？

I am assuming your use of the term "slave ship" refers to the ships that brought African slaves to North America. There are a number of reasons why rape was commonplace in these situations. For one, African people were seen by the white slave traders as "sub-human," and therefore abusing them was deemed acceptable. For another, this was a time when women in general were in a subservient position in society, and rape was a common way for men to degrade and control women, who were in many cases seen as the legitimate property of men via marriage and also via slavery or indentured service. The cruel treatment of African slaves seems to have been symptomatic of general racism (i.e., fear of difference) but also part of the racist belief system that allowed slavery to proliferate (i.e., the idea that Africans must somehow be inferior to white people because of differences in culture). There was also a belief that African slave women should be impregnated by white men as a way to somehow increase the "purity" of their bloodlines, assuring the breakdown of the African community in America. And of course, rape as a way to demean, humiliate, and abuse women was probably the main motivation for it. By instilling fear and shame in enslaved women, the slave traders, owners, and overseers could potentially make them more pliable and less likely to resist or disobey.

Why is "Leda and the Swan" considered a modern poem?

"Leda and the Swan," written in 1923, is considered a modern poem for several reasons.
First, it offers a fairly graphic description of a rape, such as the mention of Zeus's fingers pushing the "feathered glory from her loosening thighs" and "the shudder in the loins." A Victorian or Edwardian poem would almost certainly have referred to the rape more discreetly.
Second, the poem does not treat the sexual liaison as a seduction but directly faces that it was a brutal rape. This frankness reflects a modern consciousness that had been forced to come to terms with the brutality and violence of World War I and could no longer retreat into innocence.
Finally, just as in Yeats's cosmology, Leda's rape ushered in a cycle of violence that led to the fall of Troy. Yeats thought the world was entering another historical cycle of violence—an example of modern pessimism at odds with the optimism of the nineteenth century.

What is the profession of Professor Lidenbrock?

Professor Otto Lidenbrock is a geology professor from Hamburg, Germany who is also is the curator of a mineralogy museum. It is his purchase of an Icelandic saga that inspires the journey to the center of the earth. The journey comes about because within the manuscript the professor finds a note written in code by a sixteenth-century alchemist.
Lidenbrock is a somewhat mad—or at least obsessive—professor and insists that all else must stop until the message is deciphered. Finally, his nephew Axel cracks the code to discover that the message says that by descending through a certain crater in Iceland, one can get to the center of the earth. This excites Lidenbrock, who immediately organizes a trip to Iceland and, from there, deep into the bowels of the earth. His expertise in geology and mineralogy will prove helpful on the journey.

Examine the use of figurative language in the poem "Cooks Brook" by Al Pittman and comment on its effect.

In terms of figurative language, such as simile and metaphor, this poem does not rely heavily on individual pieces of figurative language. It is literally a poem about diving into a rock pool; most of the figurative element comes in when we consider the poem as a whole.
There is one continued metaphor in the poem: when the speaker renders the image of the rock pool, they refer to the water opening like a “wound,” and that when you sink below the surface of the water it closes “in a white scar.” This language emphasizes the danger of the action and reinforces the previous stanza’s reference to dying “skull smashed.”
The action in the poem is, overall, a metaphor for growing up; the risks we take when we do so, and the way we feel like we should hide our emotions and fears when we become adults. The dive not being difficult except for the one dangerous rock shelf is an allusion to the risks we take when we have something to prove, and how everything we do has inherent hazards which we need to consider. The speaker tells us it is better to dive into the water and smash your skull than climb back down; this is an allusion to another risk in life—social ridicule and shame. Especially for masculinity, pretending not to be afraid of an obvious danger is a common theme in coming-of-age stories like this one.
The final stanza refers to how the speaker feels and acts after they have jumped into the pool. The speaker is “surprised” to be alive and surfaces from the dark water, “gasping.” Despite this fear and surprise, they then “leisurely” swim back to shore, feigning nonchalance despite having just “daringly defied the demons / who lived so terribly / in the haunted hours of your sleep.” This is an allusion to the idea that when we grow up, we need to develop an external face to show the world and to pretend that we aren’t afraid. The poem is reinforcing that the fear (and danger) will always be there, but that we just become more practiced at facing it and covering it up.

I'm having trouble writing a thesis for The Kite Runner. I want to choose social hierarchy/class as my main topic in the essay, but now I need examples and clues because I don’t know how to approach this problem.

There are many ways that you can approach the idea of social hierarchy in The Kite Runner. Here are some ideas for you:
1. Social hierarchy has a great effect on the development of identity in The Kite Runner. Class is closely tied to one's self-worth and subsequent life choices; this is clearly seen in the development of the characters Amir and Hassan.
2. One's class heavily influences one's outlook on life. Oftentimes, class gives people either a sense of control and agency or the feeling of always being at the whim of others. The Kite Runner highlights the ways in which class shapes one's view of life.
3. Class is highly rigid and violently enforced in The Kite Runner. However, characters often figure out how to subvert the structure of social hierarchy in ways that show a commonality between all people, regardless of class.
What is important is to think about how you feel class and hierarchy shapes the characters of the novel. Do you think their class is a defining feature of who they are? Do you think that class is not important when it comes to their relationships, or do their relationships exist as they are because of class?

What are five poetic devices used in Allen Ginsberg's poem "America," and what are their locations in the poem?

The speaker in this poem addresses America, the country, directly, as though it could hear and respond. This is a poetic technique called apostrophe, which refers to the practice of addressing someone or something as though it could hear and respond to the speaker in a poem. In a sense, then, this technique personifies the object being addressed—America in this case—by implying that the country can understand the speaker.
Ginsberg further personifies America by insisting that it makes "insane demands" that sicken him (line 14) or that it is "sinister" (20), that it can make a "practical joke" (21), or that it can "push" him to do or not do something (24). To personify something is to give it human qualities that it cannot literally possess, because it is not a human being. The speaker, in fact, seems to argue with America (though America never responds).
He personifies other things as well, like Time Magazine, saying that "its cover stares at [him]" every time he passes the corner store (40). He also personifies the continent of Asia, saying that it "rises against" him, and he compares himself to a country—America—via metaphor when he says that he’d "better consider [his] national resources."
He uses a number of allusions—references to other people, events, texts, and so on—with which he expects his reader to be familiar: "Tom Mooney," a possibly wrongfully convicted political activist; "Spanish Loyalists," a group maligned for its support of communism during the civil war in Spain; "Sacco & Vanzetti," two Italian-American anarchists who were executed for a murder they probably did not commit (but who were victims of anti-Italian prejudice); "the Scottsboro boys," nine black teens who were falsely accused of raping two white women; and so forth. These allusions serve to display how corrupt America and American justice can be.
In the final line, the speaker says that he is now "putting [his] queer shoulder to the wheel." This is an idiom that means to work hard toward a goal. He evidently intends to better America by grappling with her corruptions.

Ginsberg's "America" is a comic poem raising questions about American society in the 1950s. It is worth listening to Ginsberg read it to hear the audience's laughter. This helps gauge how it was received in the 1950s.
The poem is filled with allusions. Allusions are references to other works of literature or to people and events outside the poem itself. This can be confusing to us today, as many of the allusions are no longer completely familiar. We hear, for example, of Burroughs, Wobblies, Time Magazine, Spanish Loyalists, and Sacco and Vanzetti. By invoking these names, Ginsberg creates an "in-the-know" feeling and a bond with his audience. If, at the time it was written, you could pick up the ideology that all these allusions act as a shorthand for, you would receive the warm feeling of being in Ginsberg's hip, left-wing "club."
Ginsberg also makes a more oblique, literary allusion to Walt Whitman when he says "I am America."
Ginsberg uses personification, which treats or addresses an animal or object as if it is a person. He personifies American when he writes: "America, I am addressing you."
Ginsberg employs deadpan comedy. This says something that is meant to be funny with a straight face. Ginsberg does this in lines such as "Everybody's serious but me" and "America this is quite serious."
Ginsberg also mocks the other side of the political divide with parodic language by mimicking the ungrammatical cadences he imagines used by the right-wingers who fear communists. He makes repetitive, simplistic statements and uses mindless cliches, such as "eat us alive":

America its them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest.

Ginsberg also uses similes:

I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.

A simile is a comparison using like or as. Ginsberg is being comic when he says his strophes as are individual as Ford's autos, as Ford's cars were known for their assembly-line sameness.

How does Dorfman create a powershift between Paulina, Gerardo, and Roberto?

In Ariel Dorman’s play, Pauline and Gerardo Escobar are a married couple. They are basically happy together, but Paulina continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. In years past, while she was imprisoned by the repressive state authorities, a doctor at the prison repeatedly raped and tortured her. Gerardo is an activist lawyer investing the former regime’s abuses. Through an apparently random incident, Gerardo brings home Roberto Miranda, a man who had provided roadside assistance with his car. Paulina is convinced after hearing Roberto’s voice that he is the rapist. Having once been the victim, Paulina turns into the aggressor by confining Roberto. Gerardo shifts from supporting justice to abetting this illegal detention. Roberto—if he truly is the person Paulina believes he is—shifts from powerful to powerless as he is detained in the couple’s home.