What is the historical significance of Animal Farm?

Aside from having literary significance as a great, canonical novel in the English language, Animal Farm is significant in that it reflects the unease and disillusionment many intellectuals on the left felt with events in the Soviet Union. Though the book was published after World War II, it was written as many, including democractic socialists like Orwell, were discovering the horrors of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. The animals' revolution, like that of the Bolsheviks, collapses into brutality and tyranny, betraying its founding ideals in a nightmare arguably worse than the society they overthrew. Animal Farm, along with the equally grim 1984, serves as a reminder that revolutions are doomed to fail if they do not respect the rights of individuals. Of course, it can be read as a simple barnyard fairy tale, but realizing the context in which it was written provides the reader with a deeper understanding of the work. Animal Farm is a far more powerful work if the reader realizes just what it is that Orwell is satirizing.

Please write a summary which reflects pages 110-140 of Fahrenheit 451.

This section of Fahrenheit 451 contains the climax and its resolution in the narrative as Guy Montag finally revolts against his stultifying society.

In Part 3, "Burning Bright," Montag is surprised that a call to which he has been assigned is his own home, from which Mildred with a face "numb and featureless" flees with a suitcase. As usual, Beatty teases Montag about responsibility and consequences attached to his recitation of poetry, saying that the beauty of fire is that "it destroys responsibility and consequences."Further, he orders Montag to burn his own house, and afterwards, he will be under arrest. All this time Faber calls to him over the two-way radio, asking what is happening and pleading with him to save the books. Then, the green bullet falls from Montag's ear and Beatty discovers it.

After burning his house, Montag stands with the flame thrower still in his hands. Beatty berates Montag further, asking him just where the books have taken him now. Then, after quoting from Julius Caesar, Beatty mocks Montag "Go ahead now, you second-hand literateur, pull the trigger!" And, as Beatty walks forward, telling Montag to turn over the flame thrower, Montag instead turns the flame thrower upon Beatty, setting him ablaze, shrieking and writhing.

Having knocked out the other firemen, Montag is attacked by the Mechanical Hound which shoots the procaine needle into his leg, causing Montag to lose feeling in the leg. Nevertheless, he runs and retrieves four remaining books, sobbing at his losses and his unintended murder of Beatty. Suddenly, a thought takes hold of him: "Beatty wanted to die." But, this thought is temporarily pushed aside as Montag must flee the scene because he has listened to the Police Alert on him. But, where? The only one he can trust is Faber; besides, without knowing it, Montag has been heading toward the professor's home. Before he goes too far, Montag realizes that must clean up, so he steps into a restroom at a gas station. While inside, he hears on the police radio that war has been declared; then, he thinks he hears a police beetle rushing toward him at tremendous speed. Running as hard as he can, Montag slips and falls, and the beetle swerves, just missing him. The beetle heads back, but by this time Montag is gone.

Montag plants the books in the kitchen of another fireman named Black, in retaliation for his burning of other people's houses. Afterwards, Montag hurries to the home of Faber, who is glad to know that Montag is alive. Montag tells him that Beatty had heard Faber's voice, but he has killed Beatty. Montag expresses his astonishment at all he has done, but Faber tells him that he has done what was necessary. Montag adds,

"I could feel it for a long time, I was saving something up, I went around doing one thing and feeling another. God, it was all there. It's a wonder it didn't show on me, like fat. And now here I am, messing up your life. They might follow me here." 
"I feel alive for the first time in years," Faber counters. 

Faber takes Montag into a room where he shows him what is being broadcast: a Mechanical Hound is being flown to the scene of the burning. Because Montag knows the infallibility of the Hound, he wonders if he will have time for a speech before being killed. "What could he say in a single word, a few words, that would sear all their faces and wake them up?" he wonders.Turning to Faber, Montag tells him to clean up his scent after he departs and to fill a suitcase full of his dirtiest clothes, to hold his smell there even if he is gone.

Montag rushes to the river. He sees the Mechanical Hound hovering near Faber's house, until it finally turns and goes on. But, he hears the police telling people to watch out their windows for Montag. So, he hurries on and as he reaches the river, he douses himself with the whiskey and puts on some of Faber's clothes.

He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors....After a long time of floating on the land and a short time of floating in the river, he knew why he must never burn again in his life.

As he floats, Montag understands that the burning must stop. He relishes the sights and dry smell of hay because in the night he can enjoy the warmth of a barn and the dream of fresh milk, and a few apples and pears. But, when he steps out of the water, Montag is taken by surprise at the appearance of what he thinks is the Hound. However, it is only a deer. Filling his lungs with the smells of a real world of leaves and animals, Montag finds the railroad tracks about which Faber has told him. And, there is a fire, a strange fire that warms, not burns; around this fire there are hands and voices. Then, one of the voices calls to Montag, inviting him into their circle. Montag thanks them, and he inquires how they know his name. The man named Granger reveals a television operated by batteries, and they watch as police are putting an end to the chase as they have the Hound sniffing for a scapegoat "to end things with a bang." Soon, a solitary man walking is found; he is seized by the Hound, and the screen blackens. Then an announcer says, "Montag is dead."

Granger asks Montag if he wants to join them; Montag explains that he knows some of Ecclesiastes and a little of Revelation in the Bible. Turning, Granger introduces Montag to other literary works in the forms of people in order to keep the knowledge intact. "...we're the odd minority crying in the wilderness."

What are sanity and insanity indicators relating to the narrator in the story ''The Tell-Tale Heart''?

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," a narrator tells the story of an old man he is caring for, whom he eventually kills. From the start, he addresses the reader (by using second person-you) saying that the reader may find him to be very nervous. By the end of the story, his guilt over the murder has caught up with him and he confesses to the crime. There are many examples in the story that support a reading of the narrator being sane and also insane.

The points that show the narrator as sane include his explanation of the time and days, as well as the steps he took to commit the crime. He seems logical in this explanation, even though his motivation may be problematic. The examples that point to his insanity are his insistence on killing the old man while the eye is open and the heartbeat he claims to hear throughout the story. Because we know that there is no way he can hear a dead man's heartbeat, this is perhaps the strongest example that points to the narrator's insanity.

What are three very important lines pertaining to "The Leap" by Louise Eldrich?

Three meaningful lines in "The Leap" are as follows:

1. "I owe her my existence three times."


2. "My mother once said that I'd be amazed at how many things a person can do within the act of falling."


3. "I know that she's right. I knew it even then. As you fall there is time to think." 

These lines are important because they tie to the theme of making connections and decisions. Connections between the mother and the daughter run throughout the narrative of Louise Erdrich's story, and decisions are often involved.

1. Anna Avalon, whose last name suggests aviary movement, leaps through the air during a terrible storm and grabs a life-saving guide wire, saving her life which enables her to meet her husband and give birth to their daughter, the narrator. 
2. Years after her trapeze flight through the air, Anna tells her daughter that she was able to calculate her chances of survival since she did not grab her husband's ankle and fall to her death with him. Instead, she twisted her body so that she could change directions and grab the wire that saved her life. 
3. The narrator states that after her mother rescued her from her burning bedroom and, holding her in her arms, they jump to the firefighters' net, the narrator was, indeed, able to think as they fell through the air:

I slowly wondered what would happen if we missed the circle or bounced out of it.

She puts her faith in her mother and holds on as they fall to safety.

As these quotes illustrate, this story addresses moments of decision in people's lives and the manner in which they respond to these critical times, brief times which change the course of people's lives and make connections with others.

What does Sodapop tell Ponyboy about his plans for Sandy and himself?

At the end of Chapter 1, Sodapop is lying in bed next to Ponyboy. Ponyboy asks him why he dropped out of school and Sodapop tells Pony that he dropped out of school because he's dumb. He laughs it off and says that he plans to marry his girlfriend, Sandy, after she gets out of school and he gets a better job. Later on in the novel, we find out that Sandy left town to live with her grandmother in Florida. Steve says that her parents didn't approve of her marrying Sodapop, so they made her leave town. In Chapter 12, it is implied that Sandy had gotten pregnant, and that was the reason her parents made her move to Florida. In the 1960s, premarital relations were frowned upon and Sandy's parents probably wanted to keep her pregnancy a secret. Regardless, Sodapop is devastated that the girl he plans on marrying has moved to Florida.

Is revenge emphasized more in Hamlet or in Macbeth?

Certainly revenge is much more a part of Hamlet's story than Macbeth's. In Macbeth, the Weird Sisters meddle with Macbeth out of malice, not because they are seeking revenge on him for some prior slight. Further, though Macduff does want to avenge his family after Macbeth has them slaughtered, his desire to depose and punish the tyrant existed long before Macbeth ordered their brutal murders. Likewise, Malcolm seeks to do what is best for Scotland and that is to dethrone Macbeth; it has less to do with revenge and more to do with what is right for the country.

In Hamlet, however, the plot doesn't begin to advance until Hamlet meets with his father's ghost and the ghost charges him to avenge his murder. Old King Hamlet instructs Hamlet to exact revenge on Claudius, and it is Hamlet's action (or inaction, as the case may be) toward this end that moves the plot along. Moreover, the motif of avenging sons runs through the play: first, young Fortinbras wants to attack Denmark to avenge his father's death and the loss of their lands; second, Hamlet has an actor recount the tale of Pyrrhus, son of the slain Achilles, when Pyrrhus avenges his father's death by slaying his killer; third, Laertes returns from France when he has learned of his father, Polonius's, death because he suspects foul play. When he learns that it was Hamlet who killed his father, it is Laertes's attempt to exact revenge that directly and immediately leads to the deaths of himself, Hamlet, Claudius, and Gertrude. Thus, revenge is a much more prevalent theme in Hamlet than it is in Macbeth.

How did the Cold War change the world?

While the Cold War had the effect of creating larger military expenditures in powerful countries and violent conflicts in poor countries, the greatest lasting impact was its effect on the global economy. The most obvious impact of the Cold War was the introduction of global interdependence. Increasingly, countries came to realize that their economic success depended on cooperation with other countries. This was especially true of the first world nations, those countries that Allied themselves with the United States and the West. The roots of globalization can be found in the partnerships that were established shortly after World War II. These partnerships include the European Union (EU), Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Each of these organizations partners with its members to create favorable trade conditions. Additionally, the money that flowed to the countries of Western Europe through the Marshall Plan guaranteed future cooperation between the United States and Western Europe and helped to strengthen those economies for trade.