Is "Oedipus Rex" premised on the notion that Oedipus is bound or free? Is he the puppet of fate or the creator of his own fate?

The pull
between fate (or destiny) and free will is a primary theme of the trilogy.  While modern
thinking typically scorns the idea of a pre-determined fate, there seems to be something that
attracts audiences to the idea that some things will go wrong, no matter what we do to try to
redirect or change our lives. 

Freud wrote about this topic in The
Interpretation of Dreams and the Oedipal dilemma. "There must be something,
" Freud argues,

which makes a voice within us ready to
recognize the compelling force of destiny in the ...His destiny moves us
only because it might have been ours." 

Oedipus
cannot escape some of his fate:  he does marry his mother and kill his father as predicted.  But
what he does with his life after the prophecy is fulfilled is his
decision.  He could have killed himself, but he chooses to go on.  He might have spurned his
daughters, but chooses to embrace them. 

As Robert Fagles points out,
"We expect to be made to feel that there is a meaningful relation between the hero's action
and his suffering, and this is possible only if that action is free, so that he is responsible
for the consequences." 

' play, therefore, is a combination of both
created and creator fate. 

What were the aims of the Ku Klux Klan when it first formed?

When the
Ku Klux Klan first formed in the South, its purpose was to reverse the improvements
African-Americans received as a result of Reconstruction. White southerners werent happy that
African-Americans had the same rights as white people had. They didnt like that African-American
males could vote and run for office. They werent happy the former slaves were free to leave the
plantation and pursue other economic opportunities. Thus, the Ku Klux Klan developed ways to
take away or minimize the rights African-Americans had received.

Once
Reconstruction ended, the Ku Klux Klan began to intimidate African-Americans. They threatened
them with the loss of their jobs. They hinted that there would be violence against
African-Americans and their property if they exercised their rights. In some cases,
African-Americans were killed. They developed the poll tax and literacy test to keep
African-American from voting. They used the grandfather clause as a way to exempt whites from
the literacy test and poll tax. Eventually, the Ku Klux Klan controlled politics in the South.
As more whites voted, they vote for candidates of the Democratic Party. Thus, the Democratic
Party controlled southern politics for many years. The Ku Klux Klan wanted to minimize the
rights that African-Americans achieved as a result of Reconstruction.

What happens to Fred in The Old Curiosity Shop?

Christopher Jerde

Fred's major goal in is to get his sister Nell to marry his
friend Dick Swiveller so that he can inherit the fortune he erroneously believes his grandfather
possesses. While Fred is a major force in the early part of the novel, by the time Nell and her
grandfather are on the run from Quilp, he becomes much less of a threat to them.

At the end, it is revealed that Fred drowned in the Seine after getting...

]]>

In The Crucible, Hale says, "They [the books] must be [heavy]; they are weighted with authority." What is the significance of this remark?

This statement, spoken
by the renowned witch hunter Reverend Hale, shows the tremendous faith he has in his own
education, as well as his overconfidence and even cockiness when it comes to his ability to find
witches. His arrogance, which stems from the amount of reading he has done on the subject of
witches, is on full display when he says things like,

No,
no. Now let me instruct you. We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise; the
marks of his presence are definite as stone.

Standing in
a room with at least a few intelligent people, some with more education or experience than
otherssand even another minister, the Reverend ParrisHale champions the knowledge he's gained
from his weighty books. He is the expert here because
he has read and studied all of these texts. In fact, he refuses even to continue his
investigation unless the others are "prepared to believe" him should he determine that
Betty Parris is not the clutches of hell. He believes that "all the...

What is the point-of-view used in the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

belarafon

, by Jame Joyce, is a 1916 novel that
loosely covers parts of Joyce's own life.

While the novel is written in the
stream-of-consciousness style that made Joyce famous, it is more accessible than some of his
other works. The story is told in a third-person personal style, where the narrator is not a
character but frequently delves into the thoughts of the,...

href="https://books.google.com/books?id=v6YWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=en">https://books.google.com/books?id=v6YWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=f...]]>

Regarding the Reconstruction Era, did the nation achieve the goals desired by Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass?

The nation
achieved some of the goals. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments passed, thus
ending slavery and giving African Americans both citizenship and suffrage. As for Lincoln's goal
of peace, there were no major Confederate trials for treason, and most of the former Confederate
soldiers were pardoned. The nation was reunited with the end of militaryin 1877 though the South
would continue to lag behind the rest of the nation economically.

Douglass
believed in equality for African Americans. Terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan sprang up
in the South in order to maintain the racial status quo. Though Grant pursued the Klan, many
localities still banned travel by blacks and arrested them in disproportionate numbers in order
to work in chain gangs.

The Freedmen's Bureau, an organization designed to
help poor blacks as well as white refugees of the war, was never fully funded by the
Reconstruction presidents. The former planters still managed to hold power through sharecroppers
where they used a surplus of unskilled labor and kept them tied to the land by debt. Segregation
would ultimately be the law of the land with the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson
ruling. This case only legalized what had been going on in the South for yearsthe
creation of separate facilities for whites and blacks.

In a sense, Lincoln's
plan was realized with the ending of slavery and no further civil wars. One does not know if
Lincoln's view on races would have evolved or if he would have had disagreements with a Radical
Republican Congress, as he was tragically assassinated days after Lee's surrender. Douglass's
view of greater equality and opportunities would not be realized during the Reconstruction era.
The use of segregation, poll taxes, and other laws at the local and state levels maintained the
racial status quo in the South for years after Reconstruction.

How did Hammurabi justify this law code to the people he ruled?

Hammurabi
justified his law code to the people by simply being himself. By claiming himself king and a
servant of the god Marduk, he was imbued with the power to mete out justice in any way he saw
fit throughout his lands. Initially, this was a simple matter, because Mesopotamia had not yet
been unified; however, as Hammurabi absorbed more cities into his kingdom, he faced the unique
challenge of winning over subjects who were not necessarily as committed to worshipping Mardukor
any god(dess)as he was.

As a ruler, Hammurabi genuinely cared for the
wellbeing of his current and future subjects, and so rather than rely upon the assumption that
everyone served Marduks will, he codified his 282 eye-for-an-eye-style laws into a much more
secular collection that still respected individual worshippers choices of patron deity. This
way, there would be no confusion about one god or goddess requiring more or less in terms of
punishments depending on the city of worship.

Hammurabi also recounted the
divine inheritance of the laws in afor the Code and peppered self-praise throughout the stele,
lest his subjects forget how divine and merciful he was.

href="http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/marduk/">http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/marduk/
href="https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hammurabi">https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hammurabi