What happened the day that prisoners were hiding in the barracks from the air-raid signal? What was the temptation that all of the prisoners wanted?

In chapter four, Elie describes a Sunday when the sirens go off around ten o'clock warning the camp of an impending air raid. The SS officers seek shelter and the prisoners gather unattended in their respective blocks. While the prisoners are gathered together in their blocks, they stare at two full cauldrons of soup that have been left unattended by the kitchen. Elie mentions that hundreds of eyes were attracted to the cauldrons as the prisoners were tempted with the rare opportunity to have their fill of soup and an extra ration of food. Suddenly, a prisoner from Block 37 opens a door and begins to crawl towards the cauldrons of soup. Elie and the others watch as the prisoner crawls up to the cauldron and finally pulls himself to the rim before he is suddenly shot dead by one of the SS officers. This tragic scene depicts the lengths that the Jewish prisoners were willing to go to have an extra meal in the horrific concentration camps.

In Section 4 of Night there's an Allied air raid on Buna. According to standard procedure all prisoners are to be confined to their barracks. The last thing that the camp authorities want is for the prisoners to take advantage of the situation and try to escape. But because the prisoners are suddenly confined to barracks it means that two cauldrons of soup are left unattended. Everyone in the barracks is absolutely famished; they're deliberately given insufficient food to eat by the Germans and so they're always hungry. The cauldrons of soup, then, present a huge temptation to the prisoners. But with huge temptation comes huge risk. If the prisoners are caught eating the soup, then it'll be the last thing they ever eat. Driven on by insatiable hunger, one prisoner tries his luck and makes his way over to the soup cauldrons. As he stands over one of them, about to eat the soup, he's shot dead.

How can the Ancient Greek deities be defined?

According to G. S. Kirk, the deities of Greek mythology can be broadly divided into two groups: gods and men. Kirk calls the ancient Greek stories about gods "divinity myths" and the stories about men "hero myths." The origins of these fables date so far back into antiquity that their precise beginnings are disputed. It is agreed, however, that some of these tales date well before 1000 B.C. were transmitted orally and used to help man explain the inexplicable (e.g., weather phenomena, the dichotomy of good and evil, the origin of man, etc.).
Kirk divided the divinity myths into three categories: 1) those that dealt with cosmogony and the creation of the universe; 2) the Olympian gods (Zeus, Poseidon, and that familiar cast of characters); and, 3) the stories about the creation of man. These gods were not simply of dualistic good or evil temperaments (angels vs. demons, as it were), but were known for being simply powerful. They had emotions that were usually attributed to humans, such as lust and jealousy. They meddled in human affairs. They fought amongst themselves. These gods were and are dissimilar to the deities (God, Allah) of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions.
Kirk divided the hero myths, too, into three categories: 1) the tales of yore, ye olden sagas that pre-dated the Trojan War made famous by Homer; 2) the more recent tales dating to, and after, The Iliad and The Odyssey; and, 3) the stories about men who were definitely not myths—in other words, men who were historical personages. The men of the first two categories were not "ordinary men in extraordinary situations" as we enjoy reading about today; these were not the typical tales of an underdog, like David who fought against Goliath. These hero myths were about great men doing extraordinary things, like battling the Olympians gods themselves, not merely trifling with a mortal Philistine, so-called "giant." These were not the morality plays of early American history or Victorian England, where the moral of the story was spelled out for the reader at the end ("right makes might," "honesty always prevails," and the like).
Yet, even as both the gods and the men of classical Greek mythology were great, these heroes were also faulty; indeed, most had a fatal flaw that proved to be their undoing. Thus, these sagas served both a cathartic and a pedagogical purpose.

What did John Locke believe in?

John Locke was one of the most prominent English philosophers and theorists of the 17th century; he was called the Father of the Enlightenment and was regarded as one of the most important figures of classical liberalism and British empiricism. He believed that all humans are entitled to the natural rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. He also believed that there is a clear distinction between the people and the monarchs, and he argued that if the people are displeased by the way the monarch governs, they could easily overthrow him/her, as no leader should have that kind of absolute power. He believed that people are essentially good and kind, but he also believed that they are allowed to be selfish should they choose to be, as long as they don't break the law. He was also a firm believer in the principles of equality and fairness.

Cite similarities or differences in the ways Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton addressed imbalances in social justice. How did their work reflect the relationship of the good of the individual to the common good?

Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton shared a belief in the intrinsic good and equality of all human beings. These beliefs stemmed from their similar conceptions of God, which were informed by their Catholic faith. For example, Day and Merton modeled the virtue of equality on the Catholic premise that all people are created in God's image, holding that God's love precedes any human action and therefore also any judgment that can be levied on human action.
Aside from a few minor differences in their interpretations of scriptural content, the primary difference between the two progressive thinkers was the method each used to translate their inner beliefs into political change. Dorothy Day strove to utilize coalition politics to undermine predominant Catholic institutions that overlooked systemic issues of injustice. She focused on changing the Church's institutional identity, believing that challenging existing power structures was the best way to enact change.
Thomas Merton supported Day's actions, but thought of political change as something that occurs primarily at the site of the individual, who influences reality through thought, behavior, and devotion to Catholic moral tradition. He focused more on forming networks of individuals that transcended institutions and identities to engage in peaceful protest.

Describe the culture of the town before and after Rip Van Winkle ventures up into the mountains.

When Rip Van Winkle falls asleep, his hometown is a small, sleepy backwater where nothing much ever happens. In this rural community, people are preoccupied with country pursuits, such as farming, fishing, and hunting squirrels. The slow rhythms of country life are just right for a man like Rip, who always likes to take things easy.
However, after twenty years in the Land of Nod, Rip finds that everything about the town has changed dramatically. As well as being much larger, with a much larger population, there's more of a buzz about the place. This is largely due to the town's experiences during the Revolutionary War, through which Rip slept like a baby. The townsfolk have been politicized by conflict, and when Rip wakes up, he finds that everyone seems to be preparing for the upcoming presidential election. The men at the inn argue over politics with passion and conviction, whereas in the days before Rip went to sleep, political discussions were much more civilized and sedate.
The profound change in culture that Rip encounters is the inevitable by-product of America's transition from a British colony to an independent nation.

Compare the context of the year 1984 is set in with the year it was published.

In 1949, when the novel was published, the year 1984 was far in the future. It therefore seemed possible the events Orwell described could actually come to pass in 35 years. Of course, to us, the year 1984 is decades in the past, making the work seem more fictive today than to early readers.
In many ways, the world Orwell and his readers lived in was different from our own and much closer to that of Oceania. For example, the London of Oceania, plagued with bombings, rubble, and people living in makeshift dwellings, was similar to the still bomb-damaged London of 1949. Even into the 1950s, some parts of the city waited to be cleared of rubble. Further, early readers, having lived through World War II, would have been quite familiar with the ration cards and food shortages described in the novel. In fact, rationing continued in England well past the end of the war.
A totalitarian government like the one running Oceania was also a reality in the world of 1949 in the form of Stalin's USSR. Thus, it wasn't farfetched for people to imagine a Stalin-like Big Brother ruling in England. People worried about a domino effect in which communism would take over the planet. To make the totalitarian threat even more real, Hitler and his totalitarian Nazi Germany had been defeated just four years before.
To the earliest readers of the novel, therefore, the world of deprivation and control that Orwell depicts would not have seemed as "other" as it does to us. The initial readers knew firsthand about hunger, rationing, bombing, living in substandard housing, lacking consumer goods, and the reality of totalitarian dictatorships. The novel, though still relevant today, must have seemed much more realistic, and therefore much scarier, in 1949 than it does to us.

Discuss Ted Poe and his acts of public shaming and compare them to internet shaming—in relation to Joe Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

Ted Poe is a former Republican Congressman. Before entering politics, he was a state judge in Harris County, Texas, where he gained notoriety as "The King of Shame" for handing down sentences that publicly humiliated offenders. One such sentence involved a drunk driver being forced to stand outside a bar with a sign around his neck which read "I killed two people while driving drunk."
In So You've Been Publicly Shamed? Jon Ronson observes that, for many of the offenders subject to such public shaming, the experience wasn't half as bad as they thought it would be. In the case of the drink driver we've already mentioned, most of the onlookers were actually quite compassionate towards him. Ronson contrasts such treatment to public shaming on social media where individuals are often subjected to vicious, hateful vilification that destroys their lives and reputations and which—unlike the judicial punishments handed down by Judge Poe—offers little or no chance for redemption.