When did Annemarie and Ellen have to hide from the German soldiers in Number the Stars?

In Lois Lowry's 1989 novel Number the Stars, the family of ten-year-old Annemarie takes in her Jewish friend Ellen during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. The family pretends that Ellen is Annemarie's deceased sister Lise, trying to protect her from being sent to a concentration camp.
There is an instance in the novel in which Ellen is almost taken by the soldiers after they enter Annemarie's house without warning. Thankfully, Annemarie removes Ellen's necklace, which features the Star of David, before the soldiers are able to see her. The soldiers still almost take Ellen away when they suspect her of being unrelated to Annemarie's family due to her hair color, but Annemarie's parents are able to quell the suspicion using baby photos of Lise in which her hair was dark.
This is an instance in which Annemarie and Ellen had to conceal themselves from the soldiers; however, there are a number of events in the novel in which the two friends and their families and allies must lie or hide from the Nazis (this includes attending Great-Aunt Birtie's "funeral" and Ellen and her family hiding on Henrik's boat).

How does August Wilson use blues music to portray society before the civil rights movement?

The playwright August Wilson uses blues as a device for exploring the melodic, melancholic, resilient, and hopeful inner lives of black people at a time when they sorely lacked political representation and socioeconomic freedoms (even more so than today). He often referred to blues music as his "aesthetic," injecting it figuratively into his stagecraft. Many of his characters enact the blues without singing it; blues is woven into their movements, lyrical diction, and aural qualities. Wilson's plays are also conversational to the point of being mistaken, often, as trivial. This impression of triviality is partly intended to frustrate his unattuned audience members and force them to look more closely for meaning.
Wilson turned away from the normative narrative structures of his profession, choosing to encode meaning in his characters's personalities, ideas, and drives rather than in their explicit discourse. In all of these ways and more, Wilson suggests that the forms of black subjectivity that lived in the time before the civil rights movement were dignified, valid, and beautiful—this is not despite, but because of their differences from white and other hegemonic ways of thinking.

To what extent does Arthur Miller make you feel that Eddie was responsible for his own death?

In A View From the Bridge Arthur Miller shows Eddie Carbone as being very much the architect of his own downfall. His obsessive, unhealthy feelings toward his niece Catherine drive him toward making a series of bad choices that ultimately lead to his death.
Eddie is so insanely jealous that he sets out to get his wife's illegal immigrant cousins, Marco and Rodolpho, deported back to Italy. Catherine's been growing closer to Rodolpho and Eddie just can't handle it. So in a fit of spite and desperation, he rats out his wife's cousins to the authorities. This way he hopes to get Rodolpho out of Catherine's life, leaving the field clear for himself. Unfortunately for Eddie, this fateful decision backfires badly. Not only is he ostracized by the local community for informing on the two Italian immigrants, but he ends up being stabbed to death by an angry, vengeful Marco.

How are the themes of marriage and control expressed throughout the story?

Marriage is presented by Chopin as an institution that stifles women's freedom by subjecting them to the control of their husbands. There's no suggestion that Mr. Mallard has been a bad husband; it's simply that the very nature of marriage inevitably entails his being in control of his wife. That's the general expectation of society, and as a decent, respectable member of the middle-classes, Mr. Mallard unthinkingly goes along with the prevailing conventions.
Furthermore, Mrs. Mallard's heart condition merely adds to the hopelessness of her situation. In fact, one could see her bad heart as a symbol of the relatively weak position which women are forced to adopt inside marriage. Even if Mrs. Mallard wanted to go out into the world and do her own thing, she wouldn't be able to, not just because of her weak heart but also because of society's notions of a woman's proper place. This is reflected in Mrs. Mallard's final heartbreak on seeing her husband walk through the door, very much alive and well. It seems that there's just no escape from the institution of marriage and the complete level of control it exerts over women.

Many readers assume that Chopin's story has at its center a picture of a bad or abusive marriage. To the contrary, details in the story suggest that nothing is particularly wrong with the Mallards' marriage—in fact, Louise Mallard comments that Brently Mallard "never looked save with love upon her"—but that the issue is the institution of marriage itself. In other words, Mrs. Mallard doesn't dislike her marriage in particular but dislikes the concept of marriage in which "a kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime. . . . ." The control man and wife have over the other is at the heart of the story.

What makes Tubal say that Antonio is undone?

As Act III, Scene I of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice comes to a close, the Jewish moneylender Shylock is discussing with his friend Tubal the situation involving the former’s business arrangement with Antonio, the titular character of Shakespeare’s play. As readers or viewers of Shakespeare’s play know, Antonio has stooped to borrowing money from Shylock in exchange for a pound of the merchant’s flesh should he be unable to repay the loan. In Act III, Salanio and Salarino are discussing their good friend Antonio’s misfortune, the merchant’s ship having run aground with its precious cargo lost. When the two men see Shylock approaching, they immediately disparage him, suggesting that he is the devil incarnate. When Shylock comes near, their tone moderates, but the underlying hostility and prejudices are still evident. Shylock is lamenting his daughter’s betrayal, and it is in this scene when he makes his impassioned plea for humanity (“Hath not a Jew eyes?”).
After Salanio and Salarino depart, Shylock encounter his Jewish friend Tubal. Shylock’s anguish regarding his daughter and the disappearance of much of his wealth, the daughter evidently responsible for the theft, is evident to Tubal who informs Shylock of the tragedy afflicting Antonio’s ship—a spell of good fortune for the moneylender desperate for revenge for a history of slights at the merchant’s hands. Tubal attempts to mollify Shylock, distraught by his daughter’s betrayal, by bringing up again the issue of Antonio’s misfortune. Hence, Tubal’s comment that “Antonio is certainly undone.” Tubal is stating what Shylock already now knows, that Antonio cannot repay his debt to Shylock because of the loss of the ship.

The words are spoken by Tubal to Shylock in Act III Scene i. What Tubal means is that Antonio has been financially ruined. One of his merchant ships has been wrecked on its way back from Tripolis. Tubal's had the news confirmed by some of the sailors who were fortunate enough to survive the shipwreck. He's also talked to some of Antonio's creditors, who say that he won't be able to avoid going bankrupt.
Shylock's overjoyed at the news. Now he's absolutely certain that Antonio won't be able to pay back the money he owes him. This means that Shylock will be able to enforce the bargain he made with Antonio and insist on having his pound of flesh. With his longed-for revenge seemingly at hand, a happy and excited Shylock instructs Tubal to fetch an officer of the law to have Antonio arrested.

What do you learn about Soviet governance and culture from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a work by Alexander Solzhenistyn, set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s. Solzhenistyn himself spent eight years in Soviet prison camps. The novel’s protagonist, Ivan Denisovich, is accused of being a spy and is sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. Through the novel, we learn much about the system of governance in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. When Stalin came to power in 1929, he strengthened and extended secret police forces created under Vladimir Lenin, the previous ruler. The policy of collectivization, or the forced displacement of peasants from their land onto collective, state-owned farms, meant that millions of peasants lost their land and were forced onto community farms. The penalty for resisting collectivization was steep: many peasants were sent to forced labor camps, much like the one Denisovich must endure. Stalin greatly expanded these labor camps, and millions of Soviets were sent there for minor infractions, often without any evidence that crimes of sabotage or conspiracy were committed.
Through Denisovich’s experience, we learn about the extent of repression under Stalin’s rule. While prison camps, or gulags, were not entirely new under Stalin, he expanded their reach. Stalin targeted members of the Communist party he saw as enemies, those who might have threatened his reign of absolute power. Prisoners inside the camp, as the novel details, faced punishment for challenging guards or disobeying orders. For example, the novel includes many examples of the ways in which guards used the cold to torment prisoners. Those who disobeyed were sent outside in frigid temperatures. Denying prisoners food was also a common practice during Stalin’s rule. While the novel is of course a work of fiction, it is based on true events that reveal the extent to which Stalin’s regime would go to consolidate and hold on to power.

What happened in the bath scene involving Mrs. Pearce and Eliza?

Eliza, coming from a very poor background, is not familiar with a bathtub or a bathroom when Henry Higgins commands Mrs. Pearce to give her a bath. At first, Eliza exclaims with a curse word because the bath water is too hot. She also screams when she sees herself in the mirror and reports that she hung a towel over it, presumably so as not to see herself naked.
Overall, however, Eliza takes to bathing. She tells Higgins that richer women have an easy and pleasurable time keeping clean, noting:

I tell you, it’s easy to clean up here. Hot and cold water on tap, just as much as you like, there is. Woolly towels, there is; and a towel horse so hot, it burns your fingers. Soft brushes to scrub yourself, and a wooden bowl of soap smelling like primroses. Now I know why ladies is so clean. Washing’s a treat for them. Wish they saw what it is for the like of me!

Shaw shows here how huge the economic divide is between upper-middle class women and women like Eliza. Eliza, though an adult, has never had a bath in house with indoor plumbing and has never had access to hot and cold running water. Shaw is emphasizing that the differences between rich and poor are not genetic, but environmental. It is nurture, not nature, that has made Eliza who she is.