In "Harrison Bergeron," what is the significance of the dance that Harrison performs with the ballerina? How does the style in which the story is...

Harrison Bergeron's dance with the ballerina is performed without their artificial "handicaps". Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s short story "Harrison Bergeron" is set in the year 2081, when everyone was "finally equal". What this means is that everyone is brought down to a level of general incompetence so that no one has to worry about anyone being better than they are at anything. If they are intelligent, they have earpieces that interrupt their thoughts with loud, random...

Harrison Bergeron's dance with the ballerina is performed without their artificial "handicaps". Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s short story "Harrison Bergeron" is set in the year 2081, when everyone was "finally equal". What this means is that everyone is brought down to a level of general incompetence so that no one has to worry about anyone being better than they are at anything. If they are intelligent, they have earpieces that interrupt their thoughts with loud, random noise. If strong, they have heavy weights attached to their bodies. The beautiful must wear masks.  Harrison is the son of the two people watching television. He is fourteen years old, seven feet tall, and "a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder". When he manages to get in front of the TV cameras, he tears off all his handicaps and convinces one of the ballerinas to do the same. The amazing dance they then perform on live TV is a rejection of everything the government stands for, and "Handicapper General" Diana Moon Glampers soon appears to shoot and kill them both. The style of the story changes during the dance. Instead of short, clipped, banal sentences spoken by George and Hazel Bergeron, the words themselves change to reflect the amazing dance. For example, "They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun. They leaped like deer on the moon." After the two are shot to death, the words spoken by George and Hazel are again used, and those words are trite and very simple, even though they have just watched their son be shot to death on live TV. 

Explain the ‘miracle’ in ‘black ink’ that Shakespeare speaks of in Sonnet 65.

Shakespeare had a deservedly high opinion of his poetic genius. It is a bit uncanny that he seems to be knowing that we will be reading his lines so many years after his death. In quite a few sonnets he claims that his poetry is immortal and in some he assures the person to whom those sonnets are addressed that his poetry's immortality will convey immortality on that individual. This is, of course, a poetic conceit; but Shakespeare's sonnets have been read by millions of people and published in countless volumes in English and translations for some four hundred years and are still popular. Many are so well known that they would exist in people's memories even if every printed copy were somehow destroyed. In that sense they are immortal because they exist independently of the "black ink" in which he wrote them and into which they eventually found their way into print.

In Sonnet 65 the poet tells his paramour that he may be able to perform a miracle of preserving that person's beauty against the ravages of time through the magic of his words, whereas there is nothing else that can hold out against Time. Beauty is frail and time is implacable. One wonderful line in Sonnet 65 is:

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

The image is that Time owns a jewel chest into which it places everything that is beautiful just as a woman keeps her jewels in such a chest. The poet's paramour is Time's best jewel, having been produced in the course of time and therefore belonging to Time. 

Shakespeare does not say positively that his Sonnet 65 will perform the miracle of saving his beloved--or at least saving the essence of his beloved's beauty--from Time. The poet does not sound as confident in this sonnet as he does in some other sonnets, such as Sonnet 19 and the marvelous Sonnet 55. In Sonnet 19, which begins with the startling line:

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws...

he concludes with this very confident couplet:

Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong
My love shall in my verse live ever young.

In Sonnet 55, which begins with these famous lines"

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time

the poet concludes with this couplet:

So till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

The loved one will remain alive in this sonnet until Judgement Day, and then be resurrected in the flesh as promised in The Book of Common Prayer:

...we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life...

The beautiful Sonnet 18 which begins with the famous line:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

concludes with this couplet:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Which characters in Acts 1-3 of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar use rhetoric?

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and Julius Caesar abounds with persuasive speeches. Shakespeare scholar David Bevington calls the play a "study in civil conflict," and persuasion is a key part of this. If Hamlet is constantly talking to himself and bemoaning his own fate, the characters in Julius Caesar seem forever to be addressing the crowd—or trying to persuade one another.

An early example of rhetoric emerges in Act I. Despite the warning of Cicero, himself a master rhetorician, that "Man may construe things after their fashion," Casca nevertheless falls for Cassius's rhetoric when Cassius interprets the recent violent storm as a "warning" against a "monstrous" occurrence: the senate's plan to make Caesar king the next day. Cassius speaks eloquently of this as "tyranny" and states that the Romans are "sheep" to allow Caesar to be crowned. Casca is stirred up and states at the end of this speech  that he will stand with Cassius and go as far "as who goes farthest."

In Act III, Caesar uses rhetoric when Brutus and Cassius ask him to pardon Cimber. Caesar depicts himself as not just a person, but as an immovable force of nature, like a star:

But I am constant as the northern star,

Of whose true-fixed and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament.

After Casca and the others, including Brutus, stab Caesar to death, Brutus uses rhetoric to persuade the crowd he and his cohort were loyal Romans in betraying their friend. His exhortation "friends, Romans, countryman" is one of the more famous openings of a dramatic speech. He goes on to spin his murder of Caesar as a noble sacrifice: he states that he loved Caesar, but he loved Rome more. He said he stabbed Caesar to win the freedom of his fellow citizens and for love of his country, and that he in fact weeps out of love of Caesar and honors him for his courage. Brutus might be covered in blood, but he paints himself as lily white and pure. 

Perhaps the most famous example of rhetoric, however, is Mark Antony's speech following Brutus's, in which he undercuts Brutus's protests of honor with sarcasm, repeating over and over, "Brutus is an honorable man" in a way which reveals Brutus to be anything but honorable in his killing of Caesar.

In this play, Shakespeare shows the power of rhetoric, or "spinning" a situation, to win approval or persuade, especially in the public arena. 

Explain the significance of the blood painted onto the door frames in Exodus 12.

In Exodus 12, God commands the Israelites to keep the first Passover in preparation for the final plague (the death of firstborn males) and the Exodus from Egypt. As part of the Passover preparation, God tells Moses and Aaron to instruct the Israelites to paint blood from their Passover lambs on to the frames of their doors. Painting blood onto their door frames signified their faith in God's warning and marked them out from the...

In Exodus 12, God commands the Israelites to keep the first Passover in preparation for the final plague (the death of firstborn males) and the Exodus from Egypt. As part of the Passover preparation, God tells Moses and Aaron to instruct the Israelites to paint blood from their Passover lambs on to the frames of their doors. Painting blood onto their door frames signified their faith in God's warning and marked them out from the pagan Egyptians; when the Angel of Death passed through Egypt he would pass over the doors marked with blood (hence the name, "Passover") without killing the firstborn males who lived within those houses. As Presbyterian minister Matthew Henry explained in his famous Bible commentary, this action had greater significance:

The blood of sprinkling is the saint’s security in times of common calamity; it is this that marks them for God, pacifies conscience, and gives them boldness of access to the throne of grace, and so becomes a wall of protection round them and a wall of partition between them and the children of this world.

One can also see allusions to many other biblical events, perhaps most notably the death of Christ (he is frequently referred to as the "Lamb" in Scripture).

Why is Boo Radley kept hidden in his house for 15 years?

That’s a really good question because Harper Lee never tells us the exact circumstances surrounding Boo’s reclusive existence.  Is it forced or a choice that Boo makes?  We do know that it starts when Boo is arrested for some fairly harmless teenager behavior and sent to the state school for juveniles.  Since then, he has been hiding away in the Radley house.  The rumors run wild in Maycomb about his behavior and character, and we...

That’s a really good question because Harper Lee never tells us the exact circumstances surrounding Boo’s reclusive existence.  Is it forced or a choice that Boo makes?  We do know that it starts when Boo is arrested for some fairly harmless teenager behavior and sent to the state school for juveniles.  Since then, he has been hiding away in the Radley house.  The rumors run wild in Maycomb about his behavior and character, and we are led to believe that Boo’s father has locked up Boo in the house for years.  When Mr. Radley dies, Boo’s brother, Nathan, seems to carry on the family tradition.  However, we do know that Boo gets out and about Maycomb.  He places items in the knothole of a tree for Scout and Jem, he covers Scout with a blanket during Miss Maudie’s house fire, and he saves Jem and Scout’s life when they are attacked by Bob Ewell. 

So, it really comes down to whether Boo has lived his life abused by his father and brother’s embarrassment of his past, or if it has been a choice for Boo to shut himself away from the world.  I think there is a good argument for the idea that Boo’s reclusiveness is self-imposed.  Perhaps Boo can’t understand or live in the world the surrounds him.  We know that Boo is a kind, sensitive person, and maybe, the world is too harsh a place for him to survive.  In reaction, he may choose to divorce himself from the evil of the world but still have a place in his heart for the innocent like Scout and Jem.  No clues are given in the novel, and it is up to the reader to infer what keeps Boo, an innocent mockingbird, sequestered away from life. 

How is the theme of conflict shown in the poem "The Voice" by Thomas Hardy?

The conflict in the poem is the speaker's grief. He misses his wife. In the context of the poem, she is simply gone. But as this is most likely Hardy's way of expressing grief after his wife had died, the woman in the poem is deceased. Hardy was known for intellectualism and avoiding blunt sentimentality. He manages to showcase this but allows for some sentimental notions.

The poem also shows a secondary conflict within the...

The conflict in the poem is the speaker's grief. He misses his wife. In the context of the poem, she is simply gone. But as this is most likely Hardy's way of expressing grief after his wife had died, the woman in the poem is deceased. Hardy was known for intellectualism and avoiding blunt sentimentality. He manages to showcase this but allows for some sentimental notions.

The poem also shows a secondary conflict within the grief itself. The speaker (for all intents and purposes, Hardy) clearly was more in love with his wife at an earlier time. He and she had become estranged, their love fading over time. This estrangement is why the speaker uses "woman" instead of something like "darling" or "beloved." Despite the estrangement, the speaker still does miss her. He misses her in the earlier part of their relationship when things were better and more loving. This is the secondary conflict. He is grieving but grieving more for a former, older version of her. 

In the first stanza, he imagines her calling to him, saying she is not like she was when they fell out of love (so to speak). He imagines her telling him that she is now (in death/spirit) like she was when they first were in love, "when our day was fair." 

In the second stanza, he wonders if he hears her, then asks to see her. In the third stanza, he adds that this willed hallucination might simply be the wind. He is left with only an imagined woman calling him. He mourns her death; this is the first conflict. The secondary conflict is the fact that he mourns her even though they had drifted apart. He grieves more for the earlier version of her. He wants this "version" (for lack of a better term) to be the one "calling" to him. 

Imagine that you meet a young lawyer after the party at which he made a bet with the banker. What would be the likely conversation between you and...

I would probably want to ask a lot of questions, such as the following:

• Do you really think you can stand solitary confinement for fifteen years?


• Why did you offer to spend fifteen years in solitary confinement when the banker was only talking about five? He said: "It's not true! I'll bet you two million you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years."


• How can you be sure the banker will actually pay you two million rubles if you can stick it out for the fifteen years?


• Aren't you a little bit afraid that you might lose your mind in there?


• How to you intend to spend your time?


• What books do you plan to read?


• How will you get any exercise?


• What is the longest period of time you have ever spent entirely alone?


• What do you plan to do with the two million rubles, assuming you can stand fifteen years of solitary confinement, and assuming you actually collect the money?


• Why did you make the bet? Was it purely for the money? Or do you like the idea of being free to study and meditate in comfort with all your needs taken care of?


• What do you expect to learn during the next fifteen years?


• Do you think you'll miss human companionship, including female companionship?


• Lots of luck!