In The Necklace, what does Loisel suggest to make Mathilde agree to go to the party?

Mathilde
has always thought herself destined for better things. She has this strange notion that she has
aristocratic blood coursing through her veins. This makes it all the more difficult to deal with
her current status as the wife of a lowly civil servant.

Monsieur Loisel is
acutely aware of his wife's frustrations and does everything he can to please her. When he comes
home from work one day with an invitation to the Education Ministry ball, he assumes that
Mathilde will be tickled pink at such an opportunity to rub shoulders with the social
elite.

But Mathilde is far from pleased. She has absolutely nothing to wear;
she's ashamed at the size of her wardrobe and doesn't want to be the poor relation at the
Education Ministry ball. Eager as always to please, Monsieur Loisel offers to buy Mathilde a new
dress for the princely sum of 400 francs. But even that's not enough. Mathilde moans that she
has no jewelry to wear. It's then that her husband makes the fateful suggestion that she should
go to her friend Madame Forestier and ask her if she can borrow some of her
jewels.

Critically discuss the central idea of the poem, Our Causarina Tree in 500 words or more.

The first
stanza describes the tree as a "giant," powerful enough to resist the creeping vine
wrapped around it like a python. The tree has scars but still lives and reaches up to the sky
(stars). The tree is old but full of life; in itself and as represented by the birds and bees
around it. In this sense, the tree symbolizes life but more particularly, the tree is afor
memory. This becomes more clear in the subsequent stanzas. 

In the second
stanza, the speaker notes more signs of animal life (baboons and birds - kokilas) and the
water-lilies. Although the tree is teeming with life, the speaker adds that it is the memory
associated with the tree that makes it so important to her. In the third stanza: 

Beneath it we have played; though many years roll, 

O sweet companions, loved with love intense, 

For your sakes shall
the tree be ever dear. 

The tree is literally the place
where the speaker and her companions played, so it is an actual, physical place of memory in
addition to being a metaphor that symbolizes memory. Just as a family tree shows how family
members are connected, the speaker sees this tree similarly in that memories shared with others
are connected. This goes for happy memories as well as the sad ones ("dirge-like
murmur" suggests memories of loved ones lost). There is a suggestedto the Biblical
"tree of life," and the garden of Eden. This gives the place/metaphor a sense of
paradise; in memory, it is untouchable, even potentially eternal. 

Note that
it is "our" (not "my") casuarina tree. The tree is a symbol connecting many
lives, many memories. In closing, the speaker hopes that when she is gone, there will be more
"deathless trees" in addition to this particular tree. Here, again, this can be a
literal tree (capable of symbolizing and providing an actual, physical space for memories) or
the tree as metaphor for memory. Paralleling the tree metaphor of memory is the poem itself. The
poem itself is the speaker's humble attempt to do what the tree has done for her: serve to
remember her life and those who she called companions. The poet invokes Wordsworth's
"Yew-trees" with the "Borrowdale" reference; this underscores the idea of a
poem as a written memory. 

What life lessons were taught to Scout by Miss Maudie in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Miss Maudie
teaches the children several life lessons: To show sympathy and consideration for others, to
exercise moderation, to be humble and satisfied with what one has, and to not tolerate
hypocrisy.

Moderation and sympathy:

While sitting with Miss Maudie on her porch one evening,asks her neighbor ifis still
alive. Miss Maudie says that he is; however, he remains inside. When Scout asks her why Boo does
not wish to go outside, Miss Maudie replies,"Wouldn't you stay in the house if you didn't
want to come out?" (Ch.5) Then, she tries to explain to Scout how intractable Mr. Radley
was because of being a "foot-washing Baptist"; that is, he believed that
"anything that's pleasure is a sin"(Ch.5). Miss Maudie explains that the Bible in the
hand of an intractable man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of a good, stable man.
That is, Mr. Radley's punishment of Arthur when he was a teenager was excessive, affecting
Arthur's isolated life. Miss Maudie implies that a more moderate punishment would have been
better for Arthur.

Consideration for
others:

When a rare snow comes to Maycomb, Miss Maudie allows
the children to gather some of her snow to make a snowman. But when she notices thathas taken
her hat, she calls to him to return it. Later, Jem and Scout hear Atticus talking with Miss
Maudie after he has scolded Jem for making a caricature of Mr. Avery. The children hear Miss
Maudie say," . . . erected an absolute morphodite in that yardAtticus, you'll never raise
'em!" (Ch.8) She teases Atticus but agrees with his having told the children that they
cannot make imitations of the neighbors.

Strength and
courage:

After her house burns to the ground, Miss Maudie is
courageous and strong, and she teaches the children by example to not be materialistic. When
Scout asks her, "You ain't grievin', Miss Maudie?" she answers, "Grieving
child? Why, I hated that old cow barn. Thought of settin' fire to it a hundred times myself,
except they'd lock me up" (Ch.8). She does not mourn the loss of her possessions as many a
person would, nor does she feel sorry for herself. Instead, she speaks of a new garden that she
will have. She also expresses her sorrow for all "the danger and commotion" the fire
has caused the neighbors.

Counteracting
hypocrisy:

After the trial of Tom Robinson, Scout's Aunt
Alexandra holds a tea at Atticus's house. Mrs. Merriweather, a sanctimonious hypocrite who
attends the Maycomb Methodist Episcopal Church South, praises the Reverend J. Grimes Everett, a
missionary in Africa, for the work that he does. Shortly after her compliments to the minister,
however, Mrs. Merriweather complains about the black people in Maycomb. She describes her maid
as "a sulky darky" who does not act like a Christian lately because she grumbles about
the verdict of the Tom Robinson trial. Then, Mrs. Merriweather derogates Atticus in his own
house as she speaks to one of her friends named Gertrude,

"I tell you there are some good but misguided people in this town. Good, but
misguided . . . who think they're doing right . . . a while back, but all they did was stir 'em
up. That's all they did. . . " (Ch. 24)

When Miss
Maudie hears these words of Mrs. Merriweather's, she sarcastically asks Mrs. Merriweather,
"His [Atticus's] food doesn't stick going down, does it?" (Ch.24) Mrs. Merriweather
pretends that she does not understand what is being asked of her. However, Aunt Alexandra has
also heard this question, and she gives Miss Maudie a look of "pure gratitude" for the
attack on Mrs. Merriweather's hypocrisy since Mrs. Merriweather has praised Reverend Everett,
but disparaged Mr.in whose house she is eating and drinking tea.

Describe Melanie's character in "The Egypt Game".

Melanie, who
is eleven years old, is outgoing and friendly.  She interacts frequently with her neighbors in
the apartment building in which she lives, and "looks forward to meeting new
tenants".   Because of her bubbly nature, "meeting people (has) always been easy for
Melanie...most people she liked right away, and they usually seemed to feel the same way about
her".

Melanie is also sensitive and thoughtful, and considerate of the
feelings of others.  When she first meets April, April is dressed up as a sophisticated lady,
with false eyelashes and a furry stole.  April doesn't expect Melanie to like her, but she does
"intend to make a very definite impression", and she is a  more than a little
"braggy".  Melanie quickly perceives that April behaves the way she does because she
is homesick, however, and does her best to make her feel comfortable and
accepted.

Melanie loves to read; she has "a whole bookcase full" of
books in her bedroom, and she is also imaginative.  She has created a game for herself where she
makes up families and then finds "people who look like them in magazines and
catalogues".  She then "make(s) up stuff about their personalities and what they
do".  Sometimes she writes the escapades of her imaginary characters down as stories, but
mostly she just plays out their adventures in her head (Chapter 3).

What are some imagery statements from "The Devil and Tom Walker?"

, as the name
implies, is a description in accordance with human senses, often with emphasis upon certain
details or interpretations which associate the imagery with emotion. The same scene, depending
upon the author's attentions, can be described differently according to the mood the author
wishes to set.

Many of Irving's stories use imagery to tell us about his
;

A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the
bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the
ragged beds of pudding stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his
head over the fence, look piteously at the passer by, and seem to petition deliverance from this
land of famine.

Through this imagery, we may understand
thatis not the best of men, neither responsible nor successful. We might have simply been told
this, but the details of this imagery, particularly (in my opinion) the horse's ribs, convey a
sense of pity and sympathy for the animal; we are already disposed to find Tom Walker unlikable.

Like most short cuts, it was an ill chosen route. The
swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high;
which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighbourhood. It was full
of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses; where the green surface often
betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant
pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water snake, and where trunks of pines
and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the
mire.

Irving tells us, and then shows us, that the path
through the swamp was a poor choice. Rather than saying that it was difficult to walk through,
disgusting, or dangerous, he articulates it as a problem made evident merely by observing it.

The imagery diminishes later in the story, and is replaced by dialogue. This
is largely because the scenes and character personalities do not change significantly once
introduced, and it is assumed that the reader recalls the mood as painted by the imagery; when
Tom talks to , we know he is in a gloomy swamp, and we don't need to be reminded of it each
time.

How is the overall setting in "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" important to the rest of the story?

The short
story "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a work of
magic . It tells of a filthy old man with a pair of huge but damaged wings, who appears suddenly
in a seaside village in the aftermath of a storm. Although a neighbor claims he is an angel, the
family that finds him locks the old man in a chicken coop. The entire village treats him like a
circus animal. The priest decides the stranger is not an angel when he cannot understand Latin,
which the priest claims is God's language. Later, a carnival arrives featuring a creature with
the face of a woman but the body of a spider, and this draws attention away from the old man
with wings. Eventually the old man's wings heal, and he flies away.

The
setting of this story is crucial. First of all, the village is by the seaside, so that the old
man can be mysteriously swept in from the immense vastness of the sea by a storm. Additionally,
the village in which he lands is poor, ignorant, and...

In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, to what does the priest compare the troubles that face Thebes in the opening of the play?

In his
opening speech, the priest compares
Thebes' present plague to the troubled times the city was in the midst of whenfirst came to
Thebes. Years ago, the city was being plagued by a Sphinx.
According to Greek mythology, a Sphinx is a creature that has a lion's body, bird's wings, and a
woman's face. It speaks in riddles and whomever it approaches that cannot answer the riddle is
eaten alive. According to legend, a Sphinx was sent to Thebes by the gods as a plague
andpromised to make king anyone who could solve the Sphinx's riddle ( href="https://www.theoi.com/Ther/Sphinx.html" title=""Sphinx,"
theoi.com">"Sphinx," theoi.com). Since Oedipus rescued the city from
the Sphinx so many years ago, the priest is begging Oedipus to rescue them from their present
plague, thereby comparing both plagues.

We see
the priest allude to this past plague in his lines:

It was
you who came and released Cadmus' town
from the tribute we paid to the cruel
songstress,
and these things you did knowing nothing from us,
nor instructed
at all, but with help from god
you spoke and knew how to set out lives straight.
(39-43)

Hence, since the priest believes that Oedipus was
sent by the gods to rescue them from the Sphinx, he believes that with the help of the gods
Oedipus can heal the present plague.