Help Notes

's
"" sets up a contrast between the titular bird and a "free bird." Each kind
of bird is described as taking a different sort of "journey," though the free bird's
flight is more explicitly linked to movement.

In the first stanza, the
speaker opens the poem by usingto describe the free bird's "journey":

A free bird leaps
on the back of the
wind
and floats downstream
till the current
ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun
rays
and dares to claim the sky.

These lines illustrate the flight of the free bird, who can go anywhere he chooses.
He rides the wind and "dares to claim the sky." He feels ownership of his world and of
himself.

On the other hand, the caged bird, with
his "clipped" wings, is trapped and only

sings
with a fearful trill
of things
unknown
but longed for still

The only journey this bird can take is an imagined one, and even that is difficult,
since his life has been so limited as to make that kind of adventure "unknown."
Angelou continues this stanza,...

In the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, what quotes exemplify Oedipus's arrogance?

most
definitely characterizes as arrogant
in ; in fact, arrogance is Oedipus's fatal tragic character
flaw. We can especially see Oedipus's arrogance
portrayed in his argument with the soothsayer . When
Tiresias announces that Oedipus is the murderer of the late King Laius and responsible for the
city of Thebes' current plague, Oedipus accuses Tiresias of being unable to see
the truth, as we see in his lines:

There is
[strength in truth], but not for you. You don't have this, since you are blind in your ears and
mind and eyes. (390-91)

Oedipus even has the
audacity to accuse Tiresias as being a conspirator in Laius's
murder. The bitteris that all the while that Oedipus is accusing Tiresias of being untruthful,
Oedipus knows full well that he is indeed guilty
of some murder , though at this point he does not know it
was Laius he murdered, his own father, that he murdered. We first learn of the fact that Oedipus
knows full well he is guilty of killing an innocent man...

Why did sonnets decline in popularity during the Restoration Era ?

A sonnet is a
one-stanza poem of fourteen lines which is written in iambic pentameter. It was invented by
Petrarch, an Italian poet, in the 1400s but gained immense popularity in England under William
Shakespeare. The reason for the sonnet's popularity can also help us to explain why it declined
in favour during the Restoration: the sonnet came to be...

Thursday, 2 May 2013

What are two examples of foreshadowing in "A Good Man is Hard to Find"?

When the family stops
at Red Sammys BBQ place for lunch, Red Sammy and the grandmother talk over their shared values
and disdain for contemporary attitudes and mores. Despite the fact that Red Sammy does not seem
like a good manhe speaks harshly to his wife (and he does so in front of strangers), he keeps
a monkey tied to a tree, and he is dirty and unkempthe has lots of ideas about what makes a good
man and what does not. He says to the grandmother, These days you dont know who to trust, and
the grandmother replies, People are certainly not nice like they used to be. These would seem
to foreshadow what happens later with the Misfit and his cronies. One would hope that anyone
stopping by a car thats been in a wreck is doing so to offer help, but this is not the case; the
family cannot trust the men who stop, and those men are certainly not good.

In the car, as they are driving, the grandmother asks to stop at a house she once knew, and she
entices the...

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

In the book The Art of Racing in the Rain, what are the turning points or significant events that affect the development of the plot?

When a
reader talks about "turning points and significant events" he or she is speaking
specifically about plot development. The plot of a story is comprised of six different parts:
the , the inciting incident (or conflict), the rising action, the , the falling action, and the
resolution. is a perfect novel to speak about these plot points as
"turning points and significant events."

In the exposition, the
reader learns about our narrator, Enzo, who is a dog. Even though the crux of the story centers
around Denny (the race car driver and Enzo's owner), Enzo's thoughts as narrator are very
important. It is not long before Enzo begins to run into serious issues that affect the humans
around him. As Eve (Denny's wife) gets sick and begins to die of cancer, we have experienced
the inciting incident or conflict of the book. Immediately, we enter the rising action as Eve's
parents take Zoe (Denny's child) from Denny. The tension rises as the trial looms. Denny
visits Zoe on weekends, and Enzo listens instinctively. Throughout all of the rising action, we
learn all about Enzo's thoughts about humans. Enzo's dreams continue when he sleeps during the
trial. Enzo dreams that he participates in the trial (with the help of a voice synthesizer) and
helps everything turn out okay. The climax (which is sometimes called the "turning
point") of the story is the end of the trial when Annika recounts the events, Denny is
freed, and Zoe is given back to her dad. During the falling action, we learn of Enzo's hip
troubles and other issues that prove he is getting old. It is not a surprise when Enzo dies in
Denny's arms, promising to come back as a human. The resolution of the story happens when Denny
gives a very young fan an autograph. The young fan's name is Enzo. The reader infers, of
course, that Enzo's dream of becoming "a man" has come true.

Based on chapter 5 of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, what were Douglass's two biggest problems as a child?

At the
beginning of Chapter V,is a child on the plantation of Colonel Lloyd. Because he is so young at
this point, he really does not have to do much work. He also says that he...

Tuesday, 30 April 2013

How does E.M. Forster represent racial conflict in A passage to India'? Give some top articles.

This novel of Forster's
is widely regarded to be his best, analysing the nature of the relationship between the British
colonisers and the Indian people during the time of the British Raj, and also widens this to
examine the nature of the relationships between human beings in general. Forster's motto,
"only connect", is a key theme in this novel as well as in Howard's
End.

Despite this hope of bridging cultural divides, racial
tension is most clearly seen in the relationship between Dr. Aziz and Dr. Fielding. The
relationship is seen as not being strong enough to avoid misunderstandings and racial tensions.
This is a theme that runs through the whole novel, and even when the British colonisers attempt
to bridge the gap, they often commit terrible faux pas. For example, Adela asks Dr. Aziz how
many wives he has. When the Turtons throw a bridge party, it only serves to reinforce the divide
between the Indians and colonisers. Turton, after Dr Aziz's arrest, says to Fielding: "I
have never known anything but disaster to result when English people and Indians attempt to be
intimate socially."

Monday, 29 April 2013

What does "ghost" mean in the context of line 8 in "The Raven"?

ladyvols1

"And each separate
dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor."

Thisis
the same idea as the"giving up the ghost." The death of the embers is like a person
dying and the spirit, or ghost, remaining. In this poem by Poe, the narrator is at home in a
cozy room with a fire. He is dozing and realizes the fire is dying down and the sparks, or
embers, are going out on the floor. This metaphor is giving the reader a sense of the setting
for the poem. To set the mood, Poe uses mysterious and depressing words in these descriptions:
bleak, dying, and ghost. We can imagine the cold December night and the narrator sitting
by a warm fire, lightly sleeping. The narrator goes on to tell us he has been reading and
wishing for daylight. He is trying to find peace from his memories of :

"Eagerly I wished the morrow;vainly I had sought to
borrow
From my books surcease of sorrowsorrow for the lost Lenore"

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Sunday, 28 April 2013

Compare the lives of people in the outer party (like Winston Smith) to the lives of the proles in 1984.

It is clear from Chapter
7 in Book I that the proles enjoy considerably more freedom than those in the outer party, such
as . This is because, as he explains, that the proles are not viewed as a threat by the Thought
Police in the same way as members of the Party are. There is a link that can be made between the
working class and the proles. The main problem is of course that the proles do not have an
awareness of a comprehension of the bigger structural injustices that go on around them. They
are far too caught up in their own individual lives and the struggle to survive in the
difficulties that they face. Note the following description:

The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes. Even the
civil police interfered with them very little. There was a vast amount of criminality in
London... but since it all happened among the proles themselves, it was of no importance. In all
questions of morals they were allowed to follow their ancestral code. The sexual puritanism of
the Party was not imposed upon them.

The difference in
the attitude of the Party to the proles is expressed in the rather ambiguous slogan,
"Proles and animals are free," and this slogan lies at the heart of the reason for the
different treatment between the proles. Because the proles are, in the Party's eyes, on the same
level as animals, they are not seen as a threat and therefore do not need the same kind of
attention and heavy supervision that the outer Party members do. Ironically, the proles enjoy a
far greater level of freedom than Winston ever has.

What are the values and goals of the world described in The Great Gatsby? What kind of person survives in this world?

On the
surface, wealth seems to be the most important value and goal in this world, and to a great
extent that is true. 's wealth, for example, brings him power. He impresses people with his huge
house and string of polo ponies, and he is able to use his wealth to bully the little people,
like , and keep a mistress in Wilson's wife.

understands the ethic of the
world he lives in: he knows that if he wants to regain , he needs money and lots of it. He is
willing to engage in a life of crime to earn the wealth he needs to attract her, and he is also
willing to spend it freely.

As the contrast between Tom and Gatsby shows,
however, it takes more than mere money to be a top dog in this culture. Gatsby has a vast amount
of money, but he lacks Tom's pedigree: he hasn't inherited his wealth, he doesn't have the right
connections, he doesn't horseback ride, he hasn't been to an Ivy League college, and his clothes
and demeanor are just not quite right. He is...

Saturday, 27 April 2013

Who is the one character in the play Oedipus the King, who saw, right from the start, the cause of the plague? Why is his identity ironic?

The one
character in the play who sees, right from the start, that the cause of the plague is 's
transgression in killing his father and marrying his mother, is Teresias. Theof this is that
Teresias is blind, yet he alone can see the truth.

Teresias appears in the
first act of the play, having been summoned by the King to tell what he knows about the
calamities that have beset the land.

In Chapter 17 of The Lovely Bones, what is the significance of the following quote? "It was only a moment, and then I was gone."

Whenever you are asked a
question like this it is vitally important to begin by looking at the quote that is referred to
in context and then to try and relate it to the theme or message of the story. This quote that
you have identified appears when the family have a party to celebrate Lindsey and Samuel's
engagement. As the family engage in many toasts and also eat brownies, it is only Buckley who
aactually sees Susie:

He saw my shape and face, which had
not changed--the hair still parted down the middle, the chest still flat and hips
undeveloped--and wanted to call out my name. It was only a moment, and then I was
gone.

Note the implications of this quote. Firstly, Susie
is still "with" her family and very much involved and caught up in their lives.
Although she is dead, she has not left them and is still "living" in a sense in the
real world. She has not yet been able to move on and come to terms with her own death and
absence from her family. However, at the same time, this ability to be with her family is
profoundly limited. Buckley is only able to see her for a "moment" before she
disappears again. The significance could refer to the family's own process of coping with
Susie's disappearance and suspected death. Having been a very real presence in the days after
her murder, Susie now only flashes up as a character occasionally. They are beginning to move
on.

Friday, 26 April 2013

What was the importance of authentication by a white person on the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass?

Not one but
two prominent white abolitionists endorsed Douglass's memoir: William Lloyd Garrison with his
preface and Wendell Phillips through a letter. Both documents offer a legitimizing frame through
which white audiences could read this work. Both men provide a bridge to white audiences by
vouching for Douglass's credibility and character.

This authentication was
crucially important at the time. First, as Garrison points out in his preface, white prejudice
against darker-skinned people was intense, a fact he hopes the memoir will help contest. He
knows he has to step in as a white person, patronizing as it is, to vouch for a black man: White
people (the overwhelming audience for the book, as few African Americans could read) had been
conditioned to treat black people with contempt and suspicion. Therefore, Garrison writes openly
that he considers the memoir to be:

a stunning
blow...inflicted on northern prejudice against a colored complexion.

He also hopes that the memoir will cause white people to
"cease to talk of the natural inferiority" of black people.

That
Garrison has to spend time defending African Americans against claims that they were inferior
shows that, even in liberal abolitionist circles which wanted to free slaves, white people most
often did not consider black people their equals.

Therefore, for Douglass's
book to be taken seriously, both Garrison and Phillips have to state that they have known
Douglass for a long time and attest that he is a good and worthy person. Garrison takes pains to
refer to Douglass's "virtuous traits of character," while Phillips writes to Douglass
(but really to his white readers) that:

Again, we have
known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in your truth, candor, and sincerity.
Every one who has heard you speak has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book
will feel, persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth.

Without these prominent men standing behind him, it would be easy
for white people to dismiss this memoir as untrue, biassed, or exaggerated, especially given an
increasingly vocal and strident Southern propaganda machine that at this time was arguing not
only that slavery was a necessary evil but a positive good, spinning tales of slaves that were
well cared for by loving owners on happy plantations. Both Garrison and Phillips go to great
lengths, therefore, to assert that not only is what Douglass saying true but that his experience
is typical and widespread.

Both men use their introductions not only to lend
needed credibility to Douglass himself, but to frame his work as an act of extreme courage in
the face of a grave threat, similar to that which faced the writers of the Declaration of
Independence when they fought tyranny. As Phillips writes:

You...publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you around. In all the
broad lands which the Constitution of the United States overshadows, there is no single
spot,however narrow or desolate,where a fugitive slave can plant himself and say, "I am
safe."

Both Garrison and Phillips try to make
Douglass part of a white tradition of struggling for freedom and to use his book to galvanize
the abolitionist movement to work harder to abolish slavery.

In Octavia Butler's novel Kindred, what does Sarah teach Dana about becoming a woman? Be specific. How do her advices/lessons conform to or resist the...

In , Sarah
is a slave in the house. When Dana first meets her, she sees her as the "mammy" type,
but soon discovers she is far more than that.

Sarah teaches Dana how to
cook. She also gives her advice about living on the plantation. Sarah ultimately shows Dana, why
so many of the slaves didn't try to fight back. Dana learns that all of Sarah's children have
been sold and only her daughter, Carrie, is still there because she can't speak....

Thursday, 25 April 2013

How important is religion to the way Eliezer defines his identity?

That
religion is a central element in Eliezer's life is obvious from the opening pages of .
This is before war and genocide have impacted the people of his hometown, Sighet.
Eliezer is interested almost to the point of obsession in finding a teacher to instruct him in
Kabbalah. It's not a case of his being expected to become a scholar of the Jewish writings; in
fact, it's almost the opposite, because his father tries actively to discourage
him from pursuing this activity. "There are no Kabbalists in Sighet," his
father tells him. Altogether, it is a basically secular family and a secular community in which
young Eliezer finds himself. This fact in itself makes his own interest in religion even more
significant than it would have been had it simply been the normal thing to do for the Jewish
population of Sighet.

The one person Eliezer bonds with, especially over the
issue of religion, is Moishe the Beadle, who is the closest he can find to a Kabbalist and a man
who can help him with his religious studies. It's significant, and ironic in a grim sense, that
Moishe is the only one who attempts to warn the Jews about the danger they're in. Because he's a
foreigner, Moishe has been deported before the others and has seen the mass murder of the Jews
taking place. He has escaped and managed to return to Sighet, but no one believes his story. It
is perhaps emblematic of the whole issue of denialthe refusal of the Jews who have not yet
experienced it to believe that such things could possibly be happening, and will in fact happen
to themthat it is a religious man who learns the truth first and tries to
warn them. Their refusal to believe him is a counterpart, in some way, to their secularism,
their embracing of modernity, and their overall incredulity that such savagery could be taking
place in the modern age.

Once in the concentration camp, Eliezer's religious
beliefs are shaken. Like others, he cannot grasp why God would allow these things to happen, but
he repeatedly tries to contextualize the atrocities in terms of the teachings of Judaism. Men
are reciting Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, and he observes,

I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before
recited Kaddish for themselves.

It is not surprising that
the victims, under these circumstances, would be completely shaken in their faith. But Eliezer
repeatedly asks why? again and again. His identity as a religious person is
so strong that, although his faith is shaken, he cannot abandon the thought
of God and his bafflement that God would allow this massive atrocity to take place. But at the
end of this "journey," after his father is gone and the camps have been liberated,
there is no longer any mention of God. Eliezer finally is able to look at himself in a mirror,
and he describes what he sees as a corpse staring back at him. Finally, his religious belief has
been purged from him, and even if it has not been, his recognition that he has become one of the
living dead overrides whatever remains of his thoughts of God.

Help Notes

Tuesday, 10 December 2019

To what degree were the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, the USSR, and Japan successful in regards to their efforts in economic mobilization during the...

Tuesday, 7 May 2013

How and why is the inner party social group represented in a particular way in 1984?

Monday, 6 May 2013

What is meant by Nell's statement "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness"?

Sunday, 5 May 2013

What grade level could a lesson plan be made for A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle?

Saturday, 4 May 2013

Compare three themes in Night and in Catching Fire.

Friday, 3 May 2013

How does the poem "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou relate to journeys?