In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, how does Lorenzo plan to disguise Jessica in order for her to escape from her father?

In Act 2, Scene 4, Lorenzo receives a note from Jessica saying that she has the clothes of a page ready for their escape. (A page is a young servant boy.) In this same scene, Lorenzo asks his friends if they are all going to the masque that night because he has a torchbearer ready to go with them. When they all tell him they will go, he advises everyone to meet at Grazanio's place before heading to the masque that night. In Act 2, Scene 6, Lorenzo meets Jessica at her window and helps her down with gold and jewels stolen from her father. As she is descending, Lorenzo tells Jessica that since she is clothed as a boy, she must act as the torchbearer for him and his friends as they go to the masque that night. Therefore, Lorenzo has Jessica disguised as a young servant boy and torchbearer to help her to escape her father's house.

During Atticus’s speech, Scout sees him do two things she has never seen him do before. What are they, and what do they reveal about how Atticus...

During his speech, Atticus loosens his clothing, and he sweats (two things Scout has never seen Atticus do before).

Before he addresses the court, Atticus loosens his tie and unbuttons his vest and collar. He also takes off his coat. Prior to this, Scout has never seen her father loosen his clothing; the only time he does so is when he's getting ready for bed. Later, when Atticus takes off his glasses and wipes them, Scout notices that he's sweating. She has never seen her father sweat before.

In loosening his clothing before he speaks to the jury, Atticus is letting the jury know that he feels comfortable addressing them as equals and friends. His uncharacteristic action demonstrates his belief that all men should be equal in a court of law.

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court..."

In his speech, Atticus tries to debunk the widespread belief that all African-Americans are untrustworthy or immoral human beings. He argues that immoral people can be found in all sections of society, irrespective of color. During his speech, Atticus sweats, something Scout says she's never seen her father do before; this is a strong indication that Tom Robinson's case has greatly affected Atticus.

Atticus finds himself having to speak some unpopular truths in court. It is a difficult undertaking and an ambitious one at best. He knows that it will not be easy for the white jury to accept Mayella's guilt.

“She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards."

Mayella's infatuation with Tom is a controversial possibility, one that the jury may not want to entertain. This may be part of the reason that Atticus sweats as he argues for Tom's acquittal; he's taking a huge risk in exposing the ugly truths behind Mayella's rape accusation. This is one way his speech is different from others he's made in court in the past: he has to confront the ingrained prejudices and biases of the society he is a part of.

Despite the risk, however, Atticus is willing to do the right thing. He is willing to risk the condemnation and judgment of society in order to save an innocent, black man from certain death. Atticus' actions in court demonstrate his earnestness and integrity.

Why do you think Orwell's voice as narrative is the only one readers hear? Is the absence of a dialogue a strength or weakness in "Shooting an...

Orwell seems to have wanted to emphasize the internal conflict experienced by the narrator, who does not really want to shoot the elephant but feels compelled to do so to "avoid looking a fool." He wants to emphasize, at least in part, the ways in which the demands and logic of the empire forced people to act against their own moral compasses. By shooting the elephant, the narrator becomes what the Burmese people expect (and indeed demand) him to be—a violent killer. We realize, only because we view the incident through his eyes, that he does not ultimately want to act in this way, though he also freely acknowledges that he hates the Burmese people. At the same time, the narrator's perspective and lack of dialogue with the Burmese people causes us to see the colonial peoples as essentially faceless and one-dimensional. They are an angry, baying mob whom the narrator views with contempt and more than a little fear. It could be argued that the narrator's point of view fails to interrogate the complexities of empire by depriving the Burmese people of any individuality.

Did the pigs destroy the children's books from which they learnt to read and write from? How long did they try to educate the other animals on the...

In Chapter Two of Animal Farm, the pigs reveal to the other animals that they have taught themselves to read and write. They did this over the course of three months and using an "old spelling book" which once belonged to Mr and Mrs Jones' children. The pigs then threw the book onto the "rubbish heap" - an act symbolic of their rejection of human oppression and their seizure of Animal Farm.

After this, Snowball, one of the pigs, decides to teach some of the other animals how to read and write. According to the text (in Chapter Three), the Revolution takes place in June and Snowball teaches these lessons until the "autumn," by which time almost all of the animals on the farm are literate "in some degree." This suggests that Snowball taught these literacy lessons for around three months in total. 

When does Miss Strangeworth stop calling Mr. Lewis "Tommy?"

In "The Possibility of Evil," Miss Strangeworth stopped using Mr Lewis's name, "Tommy," on the day that he left high school and started working in the grocery. Likewise, it was also at this time that Mr Lewis stopped calling Miss Strangeworth by her first name, "Addie."

Evidently, for Miss Strangeworth, Tommy's move from high school to the workplace symbolised the end of their childhood friendship. In her mind, Mr Lewis was now a respectable member of her town and should be addressed accordingly.

Moreover, in referring to the fact that Mr Lewis is in the grocery while Miss Strangeworth is "living alone" suggests that a romantic connection had once occurred and that Mr Lewis's move to the grocery brought it to an end. By calling him "Mr Lewis," Miss Strangeworth, therefore, reinforces the end of his connection and the beginning of a more formal and business-like relationship.

Which of the following key terms relate to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird: Black Tuesday, Hot Steams, the Egyptian period, Missouri...

Many of the listed key terms both directly and indirectly relate to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Black Tuesday was the historic day of October 29, 1929, upon which over 16 million shares were sold on the stock market, causing the fatal stock market crash that began the Great Depression. Black Tuesday was preceded by Black Monday upon which the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 12.8 percent, which created widespread panic, leading holders of stock to sell all their shares. Widespread panic led to the significant financial losses that began the Great Depression.  Though Black Tuesday is never specifically referenced in the novel, the novel is set during the Great Depression, showing us the connection between Black Tuesday and Lee's novel. We know the novel is set in the midst of the Great Depression because, in the opening chapter, Scout describes Maycomb as moving slowly at the time the novel was set due to the following reasons:

There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. (Ch. 1)

Scout further states that the novel is set during a "time of vague optimism for some people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself" (Ch. 1). This serves as a reference to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address. President Roosevelt was elected in the midst of the Great Depression due to his progressive reforms to help get the country out of the depression.

The National Recovery Act (NRA) was one of the progressive reforms President Roosevelt implemented in order to raise prices to stimulate economic recovery and create new jobs. Scout references the NRA soon after Tom Robinson's trial and untimely death. She narrates the ways in which Maycomb's citizens had moved on with their lives since his trial and death. In particular, she notes that "people had removed from their store windows and automobiles the stickers that said NRA--WE DO OUR PART" (Ch. 27).

In Act I, scene 3 of Shakespeare's play, Macbeth wonders:"If good, why do I yield to that suggestionWhose horrid image doth unfix my hairAnd...

At this point in the play, Macbeth has just learned from Angus and Ross that he is to be named Thane of Cawdor. This was one of the witches' prophecies, and it has set Macbeth to thinking that the other prophecy--that he will become King--will also come true. Banquo, who also met the witches, is as amazed as his friend at the news, but he warns that the witches might be trying to lure Macbeth into a trap of sorts with their prophecies:

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles...

So Macbeth questions whether the "supernatural meeting" with the witches is good or bad. If it is bad, he asks, why does it seem to be true? If it is good, however, why does it start him thinking about the evil deeds that must be done in order to ultimately fulfill it? He is unsure what to make of these astonishing developments, but he concludes at the end that, "if chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir." What the passage in the question suggests is that the witches' prophecy has caused him to think about committing horrible crimes. It seems not to enter his thoughts that he might ascend to the throne through natural causes. Macbeth is a frightfully ambitious man, and the witches have stoked these ambitions by hailing him as a future king. Whether they are controlling him is another matter. They (along with Lady Macbeth) certainly play on his ambitions and his willingness to trust them throughout the play, but ultimately Macbeth is the man who carries out the bloody deeds that bring about his rise and fall.