Why does the young man's voice catch when Gortsby lends him the sovereign?

It appears that the young man's emotional reaction may have been part of his act. The text tells us that, after the brief show of emotion, he quickly blurts out a word or two of thanks before he rushes off in the direction of Knightsbridge.

For his part, Gortsby is none the wiser, as he ponders the young man and his predicament:

"Poor boy, he as nearly as possible broke down," said Gortsby to himself. "I don't wonder either; the relief from his quandary must have been acute. It's a lesson to me not to be too clever in judging by circumstances."

Gortsby had originally doubted his youthful acquaintance's story when he heard it. The young man had claimed to have forgotten the name of his hotel after having left to purchase some soap. Since he cannot produce the soap he had supposedly bought, Gortsby finds himself a little skeptical about the young man's story. However, when he later spies the supposed bar of soap on the ground by the side of the bench, Gortsby rushes to the young man to lend him a sovereign.

In Gortsby's mind, he is lending the sovereign to a possibly wealthy young man. Who knows how the connection will eventually benefit him? So, Gortsby thinks to ingratiate himself to the young man, but it turns out badly in the end. Essentially, Gortsby finds that he has been at the mercy of a wily conman, certainly not a very pleasant realization on his part.

As Gortsby retraced his steps past the seat where the little drama had taken place he saw an elderly gentleman poking and peering beneath it and on all sides of it, and recognised his earlier fellow occupant.

     "Have you lost anything, sir?" he asked.

     "Yes, sir, a cake of soap."

What is the main problem in Old Yeller?

The main problem in Old Yeller is how Travis Coates, who is 14, will be able to take care of his mother and younger brother, Little Arliss, while his father is away on a long cattle drive. Part of Travis's dilemma is how he will handle Old Yeller, the name he gives the mangy dog who shows up at the family's house and consumes all their meat.

At first, Travis struggles to deal with the tasks of being head of the house, and he also struggles to control Old Yeller. The dog cavorts in the family's drinking water with five-year-old Arliss and fails to go after two bulls who are fighting. However, Old Yeller then saves Arliss from a bear, and the dog becomes invaluable to Travis in catching the heifer, Spot, who has run away. Old Yeller also saves Mama and Lisbeth, a neighbor, from a rabid wolf, but, as the dog has contracted rabies, Travis must shoot Old Yeller. In the end, Travis, though sick at heart after killing the dog, has proved that he can serve ably as the head of his household. 

In the novel The Giver why does the community refer to death as "release"?

In Lowry's The Giver, death is referred to as "release" because the leaders of the community, the Elders, do not want the people of the community to realize that their members are being killed.  People believe that those released are going "Elsewhere," that is, somewhere outside of the community.  In fact, people are euthanized when they get old enough to be more trouble than they are worth, people are put to death for infractions of the rules, and in at least one instance, a child is put to death for its failure to thrive.  Everyone in this community must be productive, healthy, and compliant. Otherwise, it's a death sentence.  "Release" is something beyond a mere euphemism in the novel.  It's a lie.  If people knew the truth, they might resist in some way, assuming that the drugs they take to suppress their emotions would allow that to happen.  But the combination of the lie and the drugs keeps the denizens of the community compliant and content, with no outrage over the killing of their old, their unfit, and their rule-breakers.

Why was the Reconquista successful?

The term "successful" when referring to the Reconquista must be considered through the lens of how it relates to the initial goal of the Christian kingdoms who fought the roughly 770-year war to remove the Muslim influence from the Iberian Peninsula around Spain and Portugal.

Invariably, a war that lasts several centuries will see a large deal of bloodshed, victories, and defeats on both sides. However, because the Christian kingdoms who partook in the fighting ultimately largely saw the nearly complete removal of the Muslim Moors from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the Reconquista, then one could consider the fighting successful for these kingdoms. After the conclusion of the Reconquista, Jews and Muslims who remained in Spain were forced to convert to Christianity. Those who refused to do so were forced to leave the country.

In Night, why did all of this happen?

The Holocaust and the cruelty behind it were the reasons that everything in Wiesel's narrative happens.

When Adolf Hitler ascended to German political power, he was able to set in motion his plan for genocide.  This plan became known as the Holocaust, a genocide of Jewish people as well as anyone deemed an enemy of the Third Reich.  The 1944 Nazi entry into Sighet was intended to move the Jewish people there into work and concentration camps.  This marks the start of Wiesel's narrative. Wiesel's entry into Auschwitz- Birkenau and the work camp of Buna, as well as his struggle to survive are because of the Holocaust. He clearly establishes how human cruelty enabled the Holocaust to happen. This is seen in the way Wiesel depicts high-ranking Nazi officials like Dr. Mengele who acted "like a conductor" in the way he orchestrated the murder of millions to the guards like Idek, who took sadistic pleasure in beating prisoners.  Wiesel also shows how this tendency was replicated in the way some victims treated one another.  Moshe the Beadle and Madame Schachter are treated cruelly by fellow victims.  In being able to show the way in which dehumanization is a sadly human trait, Wiesel clearly demonstrates that one of the worst crimes perpetrated in human history was the result of cruelty against one another.  The entire book takes place against this historical and emotional backdrop.

Was the southern economy dependent on slavery?

Yes, the southern economy was dependent on slave labor. Rather than industrializing like the northern states, the southern states were primarily agriculture. Before the American Revolution, the southern colonies mainly relied on growing tobacco as a cash crop, which, in turn, depended on slave labor to be profitable and make fortunes for the plantation owners. After the invention of the cotton gin, the southern states relied most heavily on growing cotton, again a labor intensive form of agriculture that remained profitable because of the low-cost labor provided by slaves. Slaves also were important to sugar plantations in Louisiana and to growing wheat and hemp in many southern states. The United States suffered from a labor shortage at this time and hired help was more expensive and considered more unreliable than slaves, as free people could quit at any time. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the southern economy suffered and the wealthy plantations could no longer flourish. 

In Whirligig, how does Jenny change over the course of chapter 8?

There are nine chapters in the novel Whirligig. Chapter Eight is titled San Diego, California.

As the chapter begins, Jenny is portrayed as a typical fifteen year old teenager. It is her task to make sure that her grandmother is safe while her mother runs errands. Although Jenny loves her grandmother, she feels emotionally overwhelmed by the responsibility. Her grandmother's cancer is debilitating, and the Holocaust survivor often suffers from nausea as a result of the chemotherapy treatments.

So, when her grandmother asks Jenny to take her for a drive, Jenny is immediately wary, and she panics. After all, she only has a learner's permit, not a license. Also, Jenny is worried that her frail grandmother will not be able to endure a drive in such hot weather. At this point, Jenny, who had been reading Anne Frank's letters before her grandmother called, is skeptical about the wisdom of leaving the house. She is anxious and worries that she will have difficulty maneuvering the old Toyota, a manual.

In all, we get the idea that Jenny is a very conscientious young lady and that she takes her responsibilities towards her grandmother seriously. The text tells us that she has read 'every grisly account of the Holocaust' and that she sent all her birthday money to Simon Wiesenthal's Nazi-hunting group one year. However, her mother thinks that Jenny is too serious and doesn't 'smile enough to attract boys.'

In fact, Jenny is so consumed by the cruel deaths of the Holocaust that she fails to recognize the goodness in the world. Likewise, she is initially so stressed about her grandmother's safety that she fails to fully understand the purpose of the drive.

It is Jenny's grandmother who shows Jenny that happy thoughts can be a strength when one is haunted by dark memories from a gruesome past. When she finally understands and appreciates her grandmother's reasons for seeing Rachel's house, Jacob's store, and the whirligig mounted on the porch wall of the two-story house, Jenny's perspective begins to change. She stops being anxious and begins to see the wisdom of laughter and a hopeful attitude. She begins to understand that her grandmother is preparing to die with her heart at peace with the past. The chapter ends with Jenny and her grandmother sitting quietly as they admire the whirligig. The main change in Jenny is in her perspective and attitudes toward illness, suffering, and life.