Why is the missionary circle's concern with the "squalid lives of the Mrunas" ironic in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Mrs. Grace Merriweather expresses her concern for the Mruna people at the missionary circle meeting. She then praises J. Grimes Everett for his work with the Mrunas. She tells the group: "Not a white person'll go near 'em but that saintly J. Grimes Everett" (Chapter 24).  

Mrs. Merriweather and the others show great concern for the Mrunas. They seem to care for their wellbeing. In the same conversation, however, the ladies complain about their African American servants. Ironically, they do not show the same level of compassion for the people in their own community as they do for the Mrunas.

Mrs. Merriweather is concerned by the poverty of the Mruna people. She fails to show any concern for the poverty of the African Americans living in Maycomb. She shows some concern for Tom Robinson's wife, but it is about her living a Christian life rather than that she has to be the sole breadwinner for her children and has trouble finding work.

Why does the Canterville ghost remain unseen for a long time?

I believe that this question is referring to events that occur in section four of the story. Up to this point, Sir Simon has been putting forth a valiant effort to scare the Otis family. Unfortunately for Sir Simon, all of his attempts have met with failure. Not only is the Otis family not scared of him, but they treat him like he's a joke. The twins are especially antagonistic to Sir Simon, and they play all kinds of pranks on him. By section four, Sir Simon is tired of dealing with the Otis family, and he is even a bit scared of them. He resolves to stay hidden for a bit.

The next day the ghost was very weak and tired. The terrible excitement of the last four weeks was beginning to have its effect. His nerves were completely shattered, and he started at the slightest noise. For five days he kept his room, and at last made up his mind to give up the point of the blood-stain on the library floor.

Sir Simon might have stayed hidden for longer than five days, but the narrator tells readers that he has ghostly duties that must be kept up on a regular schedule; however, Sir Simon resolves to be as stealthy as possible during his haunting.

For the next three Saturdays, accordingly, he traversed the corridor as usual between midnight and three o’clock, taking every possible precaution against being either heard or seen. He removed his boots, trod as lightly as possible on the old worm-eaten boards, wore a large black velvet cloak, and was careful to use the Rising Sun Lubricator for oiling his chains.

The Otis children catch on to Sir Simon's new tactics, and they continue to antagonize him. They are able to make a bucket of water fall on him and even manage to scare him by jumping around a corner and yelling "BOO!" Sir Simon is so frightened by this last encounter that he gives up his haunting completely.

After this he was not seen again on any nocturnal expedition.

The Otis family is so certain that Sir Simon is gone that Mr. Otis writes a letter to Lord Canterville that states the ghost is gone.

It was generally assumed that the ghost had gone away, and, in fact, Mr. Otis wrote a letter to that effect to Lord Canterville, who, in reply, expressed his great pleasure at the news, and sent his best congratulations to the Minister’s worthy wife.

In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, what are some examples of and quotes relating to the theme illusion versus reality?

In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman constantly indulges in illusions rather than face reality. For example, he imagines that his son, Biff, can become a successful salesman if Biff only applies himself. In Act One, Willy says of Biff, "I’ll see him in the morning; I’ll have a nice talk with him. I’ll get him a job selling. He could be big in no time." Willy ignores the reality about Biff, which is that he is happier and more successful as a farmer in the west; instead, Willy clings stubbornly to the idea that the proverbial tomorrow will bring a new and brighter future for Biff that involves his going into sales, the field in which Willy works. 

Part of Willy's illusion is that he lives in the past. He is constantly caught up in remembering days gone by; for example, in Act One, he recalls telling Biff and Happy when they were younger that he wouldn't travel anymore. He says, "Tell you a secret, boys. Don’t breathe it to a soul. Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home any more." What he told his sons in this reverie never came true, but Willy keeps revisiting the past in an attempt to protect his illusions and dreams. 

Happy, Willy's younger son, is torn between indulging in illusions like Willy and being more realistic like Biff. Happy literally tries to present the appearance of being happy at all times. He tells his brother Biff in Act One:

"Sometimes I sit in my apartment — all alone. And I think of the rent I’m paying. And it’s crazy. But then, it’s what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I’m lonely."

Happy is a relentless womanizer, and he has the illusion that if he only gets to climb one more rung and become a merchandising manager that he'll be happy, but he also senses that, despite climbing up the corporate ladder and dating a lot of women, he feels alienated and lonely. Happy vacillates between the illusion of happiness that will be created from success in business and the reality that he hates his life and might want to join Biff out west. 

Willy's biggest illusion is that he and his sons will reach success just by being liked by others. He tells his brother Ben in Act Two, "It’s who you know and the smile on your face! It’s contacts, Ben, contacts!" Although Willy spends years trying to get others to like him, no one attends his funeral save his family. It's clear that the principles by which he's conducted his life have also been an illusion—not reality.

Was Congress correct in approving the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by Congress in 1964 to give President Lyndon Johnson the ability to conduct a war in Southeast Asia without making a formal declaration of war. After this resolution was passed, Johnson rapidly escalated American involvement in Vietnam. The resolution was in reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the U.S. destroyer the U.S.S. Maddox was attacked on August 2, 1964, by North Vietnamese torpedo boats while in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Maddox and another American destroyer also claimed to be have been attacked by the North Vietnamese on August 4. A later National Security report determined that while the Maddox had been involved in a skirmish on August 2 that there was no engagement between the Maddox and North Vietnamese boats on August 4. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara claimed that the Maddox had been on a routine mission, but a later Senate Foreign Relations Committee report found that the Maddox had been on a reconnaissance mission to collect information about the North Vietnamese. 

By the late 1960s, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was widely considered a mistake, as it had granted Johnson broad latitude to conduct a war that became deadly and disastrous, and there were calls for its repeal. It was eventually repealed under the Nixon administration in January of 1971. Later, the War Powers Resolution of 1973, passed over Nixon's veto, required the President to seek a formal declaration of war from Congress to send U.S. troops into a military conflict. 

Why did England look so wretched from a Leftist perspective in George Orwell's Coming Up For Air, Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, when...

The answer to your question is that George Orwell felt compelled to speak out against the dangers of English imperialism and fascism.

Orwell for our time.

If we go back and study the man himself, we can see that Orwell was an old-school English socialist; politically, he was unabashedly left. He prided himself on his support for the working poor, for freedom of speech and thought, and for democratic, classless societies. Yet, Orwell was staunchly anti-establishment; we can see this in his harsh criticism of the elitist Labour leaders of his beloved England:

“The truth is that to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which ‘we’, the clever ones, are going to impose upon ‘them’, the Lower Orders”. (The Road to Wigan Pier)

While the elitist leaders of England claimed to support the defeat of an imperialist Germany, they essentially turned a blind eye to the excesses of communist Russia. The ruling Labour leaders were career politicians who favored exchanging one form of totalitarianism for another, as long as their power and privileges were preserved.

Essentially, this is what Animal Farm is about: Orwell's pigs (led by Napoleon and Snowball) were thinly veiled caricatures of Stalin and Trotsky. The pigs manipulated widespread anger and dissatisfaction among the animal populace to set themselves up as elite leaders in place of the farmers. The English Labour leaders were like Snowball and Napoleon, only interested in their own aggrandizement and success. For a time, they may have appeared to engage each other in a seeming struggle to secure proletariat rights, but in the end, their only goal was to set themselves up as bourgeoisie leaders over a scattered and divided populace.

In Animal Farm, the animals discovered that they had essentially exchanged one group of oppressors for another. There was to be no democracy, where they would have equal say in how the farm was run; there would only be the prospect of servile obedience to an indifferent and ruthless ruling class.

Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system.'(George Orwell's letter to Noel Willmett)

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. (Animal Farm)

As with Orwell's Animal Farm, both Coming Up For Air and 1984 were equally controversial. England looked wretched in these novels because Orwell felt that England's leaders were in danger of appropriating totalitarianism for their own purposes. As a socialist in the purest sense, Orwell believed that no government (whether left or right on the political spectrum) should resort to coercion and violence to control the populace.

...there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side. (from George Orwell's letter to Noel Willmett)

In Coming Up For Air, Orwell's protagonist, George Bowling, also comes to this conclusion. At a talk during a Left Book Club meeting, Bowling has an epiphany: the elitist vision of revolution only serves to benefit a small group while the masses suffer.

I saw the vision that he was seeing. And it wasn’t at all the kind of vision that can be talked about. What he’s saying is merely that Hitler’s after us and we must all get together and have a good hate. Doesn’t go into details. Leaves it all respectable. But what he is seeing is something quite different. It’s a picture of himself smashing people’s faces in with a spanner. [CUA p. 148]

 Hitler’s after us! Let’s all grab a spanner and get together, and perhaps if we smash in enough faces they won’t smash ours. Gang up, choose your Leader. Hitler’s black and Stalin’s white. But it might as well be the other way about, because in the little chap’s mind both Hitler and Stalin are the same. Both mean spanners and smashed faces. [CUA p.149]

In 1984, England is essentially Oceania, one of three powerful states which are constantly in conflict with one another. Oceania controls its populace by controlling language and thought. The country is headed up by Big Brother (who no one has ever seen), and he is aided by The Inner Party and The Outer Party in his efforts to keep the Proles (the population) suitably cowed and docile. In the novel, violent means are used by the oligarchic elite to mercilessly subdue any perceived act of rebellion against it. So, the state is all-powerful; it has appropriated all means of production, all intellectual discourse, and all memories of the past for its own nefarious purposes.

Basically, through his three books, Orwell painted a grim picture of what his beloved England could look like if it continued on the path of rationalizing away the dangers of totalitarianism. It was his personal belief that both the Left and the Right were in equal danger of preserving an amorphous state at the expense of the suffering masses. His aim had always been to warn and to educate.

The Cold War refers to an unarmed conflict between the United States and what other country?

The Cold War was an unarmed conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. It began after World War II ended and lasted until 1991. A cold war is a period of time when nations have a series of competitions and confrontations without actually engaging in armed conflict.

The Soviet Union wanted to spread communism. The United States tried to prevent the spread of communism. The Soviet Union tried to spread communism to Western Europe. The US provided aid to countries such as Greece and Turkey to prevent that from happening and organized the Berlin Airlift after the Soviet Union established the Berlin Blockade to try to force the Allies out of West Berlin to make West Berlin communist. The United States also asked the United Nations to help South Korea when North Korea, a communist country, invaded South Korea in 1950.

The United States and the Soviet Union also competed in the Space Race. The Soviet Union was the first nation to launch a satellite into space. They were also the first to get an astronaut into orbit around the earth. The United States was the first to land an astronaut on the moon.

What does history tell us about the motivations of God, gold, and glory?

The answer to this question is largely a matter of opinion.  It is very difficult to tell, 500 years later, why Europeans went out to explore.  This is partly because the evidence from history is very ambiguous.  Let us examine some possible answers to this question.

One possible answer is that history tells us that the Spanish were much more motivated by God than the English were.  When the Spanish conquered, they took priests with them.  It was priests who established the first Spanish outposts in places like Texas and California.  The Spanish converted all the natives with whom they came in contact.  By contrast, the English did not do this.  When the English came to North America, they did not make a strong effort to convert the natives.  They did not send religious people out to set up missions among the Indians.  They were much more likely to simply push the Indians off the land.  This, we can argue, is proof that “God” meant much more to the Spanish than it did to the English, who only cared abut “gold” and “glory.”

Another answer is that none of the European countries really cared about “God.”  They really wanted “gold” and “glory” and used “God” as a pretext.  As discussed above, we do not have to take the idea that the English cared about “God” seriously.  Let us look, then, at Spain.  We can argue that Spain really just used God as a means of social control.  In this view, Spain was not truly interested in the spiritual welfare of the Native Americans.  What Spain actually wanted was another way of making sure that the natives did what the Spanish wanted.  By converting them, the Spanish did this.  The natives could now be told that they should obey the Spanish not because the Spanish were powerful, but because that was what God wanted.  Converting the natives would also make sure that they were not loyal to priests or other religious leaders who might be anti-Spanish.  While it is certainly possible to make this argument, it is also impossible to actually prove whether the argument is accurate.

What is clearly true is that European countries were strongly motivated by gold and glory.  They worked hard to conquer new territories and they extracted all the wealth they could from those territories.  They tried to maintain large empires because those empires made it seem as if they were important and powerful countries.  There is nothing in the historical record to suggest that any country was interested only in “God” and not at all interested in “gold” or “glory.”

So, what history tells us is that European countries were clearly motivated by two parts of this triad.  However, it is more ambiguous as to whether they were actually motivated by “God.”  It seems clear that England was not motivated by God to any great extent, but it is difficult to determine whether other countries like Spain actually did care about spreading religion for its own sake.