In The Giver what are some similarities compared to our society? Explain the similarities.

This is such an interesting question!  There certainly are some similarities between the society in The Giver and our society.  In both societies, people live mostly in family units, with two parents heading the unit.  Families eat dinner together and talk about their day, which I hope is not a dying custom in our society.  Both parents work, and the children have school and after school activities.  Children seem to find their friendships in school...

This is such an interesting question!  There certainly are some similarities between the society in The Giver and our society.  In both societies, people live mostly in family units, with two parents heading the unit.  Families eat dinner together and talk about their day, which I hope is not a dying custom in our society.  Both parents work, and the children have school and after school activities.  Children seem to find their friendships in school and the after school activities, just as they do in our society.  They play ball and ride bicycles, just as our children do.  Parents seem to be the people responsible for feeding and clothing the children and keeping them safe, as it is in our society, too.  The elderly are cared for (until they are released), which I hope we continue to do in our society, perhaps better than we do now.  Children, as everywhere, occasionally break the rules and get into mischief.  And like our society, the community has a hierarchy, leaders, and the community has rules for which there are consequences if they are broken.  

I need help getting started with a literary analysis of a short story, "How to Date A Brown Girl, Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie" by Junot Diaz...

In "How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)" by Junot Diaz, the main character, Yunior, creates both mood and meaning for the story as he describes his apartment and the surrounding neighborhoods.

The reader feels the embarrassment Yunior feels as he prepares the apartment. Yunior defines the steps he takes to ready the apartment for his date. He cleans the bathroom, removes pictures from the wall, and hides the government...

In "How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)" by Junot Diaz, the main character, Yunior, creates both mood and meaning for the story as he describes his apartment and the surrounding neighborhoods.

The reader feels the embarrassment Yunior feels as he prepares the apartment. Yunior defines the steps he takes to ready the apartment for his date. He cleans the bathroom, removes pictures from the wall, and hides the government issue cheese. The reader can see he does not want the girl, no matter what her race is, to see the signs of poverty or the attachment to the past. “Take down any embarrassing photos of your family in the campo, especially the one with the halfnaked kids dragging a goat on a rope leash.”

He has rules for preparing for the date depending on which neighborhood the girl is coming from, and which race she is. Yunior describes the appropriate restaurant to take the girls to for dinner. He describes how a girl’s home neighborhood or race will create expectations for a restaurant whether it is Wendy’s or the local diner, El Cibao. The description of the various settings brings the reader into the mind of Yunior.

Whom does Macduff suspect of the murder?

Macduff has good reason to suspect Macbeth of murdering King Duncan. Macbeth was with him when he discovered Duncan's body. Macbeth had been acting very strangely ever since encountering Macduff when the Porter finally opened the gate and let him in. At the time Macduff did not understand why Macbeth seemed to stiff and cold. He thought it was merely because his pounding at the gate had awakened Macbeth from a sound sleep and made him angry. But Macbeth had never even been to bed. He had wanted to pretend to have been in bed asleep when the murder had been committed, but the unrelenting pounding at the gate had finally forced him to come down and find out what was going on. He could hardly pretend to be asleep with all that racket. Shakespeare invented the knocking at the gate because he wanted Macbeth to be present when the body was discovered.

Then there is the fact that Macbeth murdered Duncan's two grooms. He must have felt that he had to do it in order to prevent them from protesting their innocence. He also fears that one of them might have seen him in the king's bedchamber. Since there are two grooms, each of them could attest to the other's story. If the grooms had survived and the thanes had questioned them, the grooms would never have said that they were paid to commit the murder. Even under torture, which was sure to be used, they could not invent such a tale. The conclusion would have to be that someone had slipped into the chamber and killed Duncan while the grooms were asleep. Since Macbeth had murdered the grooms, it looks to Macduff as if he did it to silence them and protect himself. Macbeth knows that killing them looks suspicious. He says:

O, yet I do repent me of my fury
That I did kill them.

And Macduff immediately asks:'

Wherefore did you so?

Macbeth could only repent his act because it prevented everyone from questioning the grooms. Lady Macbeth sees that her husband is not doing a good job of lying. She pretends to have a fainting fit in order to create a distraction and cries:

Help me hence, ho!

Macduff is already suspicious of Macbeth. When Macbeth manages to get himself elected king, that is convincing proof that Macbeth was the perpetrator. It is a question of cui bono? (Who benefits?) The man who becomes king is probably the man who committed the murder. When Macbeth becomes king, everybody will begin to suspect him of being Duncan's murderer. Cui bono?

Macduff is more suspicious of Macbeth than any of the others because he was with Macbeth and observed his guilty behavior. He hates Macbeth for killing the king, and Macbeth hates and fears Macduff because he knows Macduff knows he is the guilty party. That is one of the reasons why he takes such a draconian reprisal against Macduff's entire family when the Thane of Fife flees to England. By wiping out Macduff's family and his entire household, Macbeth hopes to deprive Macduff of any reason for coming back. Macbeth knows he is a villain. He can't look Macduff in the eye because Macduff knows what he is. When they meet on the battlefield, Macbeth says:

Of all men else I have avoided thee.

And then he learns to his horror that Macduff "was from his mother's womb untimely ripped." No doubt the poor mother died as a result of that primitive operation, and now Macduff is motherless as well as having had his wife and all his children exterminated. Macduff is like a monster. He is Macbeth's worst nightmare.

Why did Bilbo stand on Ravenhill with the elves at the end of the battle?

The climax of The Hobbit is the Battle of Five Armies, which begins as a confrontation between the armies of Elves, Humans and Dwarves arguing over the distribution of the treasure that lies in Erebor. However this conflict is interrupted by the arrival of an army of goblins and wolves, who are the enemies of elves, men and dwarves alike. They ally themselves against the goblins and wolves and attempt to trap them between two...

The climax of The Hobbit is the Battle of Five Armies, which begins as a confrontation between the armies of Elves, Humans and Dwarves arguing over the distribution of the treasure that lies in Erebor. However this conflict is interrupted by the arrival of an army of goblins and wolves, who are the enemies of elves, men and dwarves alike. They ally themselves against the goblins and wolves and attempt to trap them between two of the spurs of the mountain, hoping that their superior positions will make up for the superior numbers of the goblins and wolves. 

The elves take up the southern spur, and the dwarves and men the eastern one, bracketing the entrance to the mountain gate, which was guarded by Thorin's company. The southern spur, manned by the elves, happened to have an old watch post named Ravenhill, which was where the elvish king took up defense. Bilbo, who is mentioned as having been quite inconsequential to the battle's outcome, joined the elves at Ravenhill because he thought that escape might be most likely from that position, should it be necessary (as the western part of the southern spur faced away from the goblin and wolf armies, while the eastern spur was surrounded by them). 

Bilbo is also possibly stirred by the adventurous aspect of his heritage to stand by the elves, perhaps out of a sense of their nobility and innate goodness that would make dying in their service a better end than that of the more materialistic and conflicted men and dwarves. 

Outline five characteristics of the african community.

The phrasing of this question is problematic because there is no one singular African community, nor a single culture shared by all African communities. Nonetheless, we can observe certain commonalities based on shared history and geographical proximity. First, there is the extended identity of the African diaspora. The diaspora include all of the African continent as well as African-descended peoples living in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. The African diaspora includes, for example,...

The phrasing of this question is problematic because there is no one singular African community, nor a single culture shared by all African communities. Nonetheless, we can observe certain commonalities based on shared history and geographical proximity. First, there is the extended identity of the African diaspora. The diaspora include all of the African continent as well as African-descended peoples living in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. The African diaspora includes, for example, Afro-Cuban, African-American, and Afro-British cultural communities. These communities may share certain similarities in language or religious expression with the continental African communities from which they are descended. A second characteristic shared by many African communities is multiple languages. Many African communities share a common tribal language, as well as a second national language such as English or French. In some communities, it is common for people to speak up to three or four different languages. 

A third characteristic is the shared history common to geographically proximate African states. For example, countries on the west coast of Africa share similar language, food, and customs, in part due to a shared history of British conquest. The same can be said of East Africa, in which nations close to each other share similar cultural traits based on the influence of Islam. Similarly, these communities may share local cuisine, which can be traced back to influences from colonial settlements or from shared trade routes and cross-cultural interaction. Finally, a fifth common characteristic of African communities is the importance and centrality of folktales and spoken stories. The West African archetype of the griot (or storyteller) is one salient example.  

What is the significance of the quote, "Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal"?

Technically, Scout thinks that there is more harm to be had, in the form of punishment that is, in playing cards than in playing with matches. Two factors inform her opinion: she's very young and has probably never been in trouble for setting a fire, but has been in trouble for "gambling;" they live in the South, where gambling is looked down on as a serious sin, especially by Baptists. 

In Ch. 6 Jem comes...

Technically, Scout thinks that there is more harm to be had, in the form of punishment that is, in playing cards than in playing with matches. Two factors inform her opinion: she's very young and has probably never been in trouble for setting a fire, but has been in trouble for "gambling;" they live in the South, where gambling is looked down on as a serious sin, especially by Baptists. 

In Ch. 6 Jem comes home with no pants on because he got them caught on the Radley fence as he ran out of their yard (after sneaking in). He cannot say that, however, as he would get in big trouble, so he lies and says that he, Scout, and Dill were playing strip poker. To this Atticus asks if they were playing cards, and Jem says that they were only playing with matches. Thus, Scout says, "Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal." While this might sound like a strange comparison to most readers, her points of comparison are fairly narrow and she has yet to experience the trouble that matches can cause.

What is text evidence that describes the setting of Divergent by Veronica Roth?

The setting of Divergent is revealed in the first chapter while Tris and her brother Caleb are riding the bus to school. As the first-person narrator, Tris describes the bus ride and briefly mentions what she sees.

The first clue she gives is that she can see the building they call the Hub, but that used to be called the Sears Tower. In Chicago today, the Sears Tower is known as the Willis Tower; the...

The setting of Divergent is revealed in the first chapter while Tris and her brother Caleb are riding the bus to school. As the first-person narrator, Tris describes the bus ride and briefly mentions what she sees.

The first clue she gives is that she can see the building they call the Hub, but that used to be called the Sears Tower. In Chicago today, the Sears Tower is known as the Willis Tower; the skyscraper's name was changed from Sears to Willis in 2009.

The second clue is in the very same paragraph. Tris mentions the bus traveling under the elevated train tracks that run all over the city. Anyone that has been to Chicago has surely seen, or even ridden, the "L" train, which is a system of elevated tracks that carry passengers to every corner of the city and beyond.