What is the setting of "A Sound of Thunder"?

"A Sound of Thunder" takes place in three distinct settings. When the story begins, the action is occurring in the office of Time Safari, Inc., at the present time, after a very significant presidential election in which the democratic leader defeated the candidate that would have led to tyranny. 

The setting then changes to the past when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The men are on a safari to hunt the T Rex.  Time Safari Inc...

"A Sound of Thunder" takes place in three distinct settings. When the story begins, the action is occurring in the office of Time Safari, Inc., at the present time, after a very significant presidential election in which the democratic leader defeated the candidate that would have led to tyranny. 

The setting then changes to the past when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The men are on a safari to hunt the T Rex.  Time Safari Inc has established rules and procedures to control their impact on this environment, but ultimately they are unable to maintain complete control. This setting is significant because it represents man's interference in natural events and our desire to control natural processes.  

The setting then changes back to the original time and location, but with an alternative reality due to the effect of the interference in the past.  Now instead of the democratic leader winning the presidential election, the fascist leader has won. This small change in the setting changes every aspect of daily life for the characters in the story. This setting is significant because it represents the importance of man's responsibility for his actions.

What political and moral gains did African Americans make during the Reconstruction and the years following?

The gains for African-Americans in the Reconstruction Era were huge. The obvious one is that slavery was ended, and millions of African-Americans who had been enslaved were freed.

Much of the African-American population moved out of the South, or tried to reunited with family members they had been separated from due to slavery. Some traveled hundreds of miles in order to do so.

But the gains went much further than that; for the first time in US history, African-American men were given the right to vote and hold office---and several African-American men were elected to local and state offices in several states. African-American families were allowed to send their children to school for the first time, and did so in droves. Literacy among African-American children skyrocketed from almost zero to near parity with White children.

This new enfranchisement also gave the Republican Party a large number of seats (remember, Lincoln's Republican Party was actually the liberal party at the time), and also led to the formation of uniquely African-American churches, mostly variants of Baptist and Methodist.

For a time, it really seemed as though White and African-American people might finally be able to live together in harmony.

Sadly, this was not to be, at least not yet. The new laws in Reconstruction, along with the Civil War itself, fomented resentment among many White people in the South, resulting in the formation of various White Supremacist organizations including the Klu Klux Klan.

Eventually the Reconstruction laws collapsed, and were replaced with a series of discriminatory laws called the Jim Crow laws. Racist White leaders were unable to completely roll back the clock---slavery remained illegal, for instance---but they did manage to suppress the political representation of African-Americans and generally make life awful for them once again. Racial segregation began during this period, and would not be eliminated by law until the 1960s. (De facto, it arguably has not been eliminated today!)

What are some of Romeo's speeches about Juliet that he recites before his death?

At the top of Act V, Romeo enters the stage and professes his love for Juliet:

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead / (Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think!) / And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips / That I reviv'd and was an emperor. (V.i.6-9)

Romeo is anticipating his reunion with Juliet, imagining he will be reborn as an emperor when he sees Juliet. Of...

At the top of Act V, Romeo enters the stage and professes his love for Juliet:

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead / (Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think!) / And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips / That I reviv'd and was an emperor. (V.i.6-9)

Romeo is anticipating his reunion with Juliet, imagining he will be reborn as an emperor when he sees Juliet. Of course, the audience knows this is not how the play will end, and this line can be interpreted as a nod towards the poison that will be used later in the act.

Later in the act, Romeo enters the chamber to find the body of Juliet.

For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light. / Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred. (V.iii.86-8)

Romeo describes Juliet as having a light that illuminates the space around her body. This imagery mirrors the light imagery that exists throughout the play.

The next line is one of the last lines Romeo speaks to Juliet:

Ah, dear Juliet, / Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe / That unsubstantial Death is amorous, / And that the lean abhorred monster keeps / Thee here in dark to be his paramour? (V.iii.101-5)

Again, Romeo lifts Juliet up as a romantic image. She is more powerful than death, at least in the eyes of Romeo. There is also some subtle jealousy in these lines as he says death has stolen Juliet as his lover. Romeo then goes to reclaim Juliet by taking his own life. Of course, the tragedy is that Juliet is only sleeping, and patience would have reunited the two. 

What are the justifications for murder in the story, "Killings"?

In “Killings,” the “love triangle” killing of Matt’s son Frank is depicted on a grand scale so that the reader sees it as a heinous crime against the natural order. Nature is such an important motif in the story that it becomes a justification for the revenge murder of Strout. The story opens at the graveside service for Frank where Matt looks across the Merrimac River and sees an apple orchard with “its symmetrically planted...

In “Killings,” the “love triangle” killing of Matt’s son Frank is depicted on a grand scale so that the reader sees it as a heinous crime against the natural order. Nature is such an important motif in the story that it becomes a justification for the revenge murder of Strout. The story opens at the graveside service for Frank where Matt looks across the Merrimac River and sees an apple orchard with “its symmetrically planted trees going up a hill.” Surrounded by the rest of his offspring, Matt knows that the order of his own “orchard” has been destroyed. His son’s murder means a tree that will never bear fruit.

Later, as Matt comes to the decision to kill Strout, he reflects on fatherhood with his children and recalls how the natural world enabled him to fulfill his instinctive role as a father. As they swam in the sea, climbed the high oak, and skated on the ice, he was there to protect them from all harm. His grief then takes on the very form of nature and is embodied in a “huge wave” that “swept him out to sea.”  

As Matt and Willis kidnap Strout and take him away to be killed, nature continues to justify the murder by providing the cover and darkness they need to dispose of the body. Leaves fall to cover the hole and tall trees block the moon as they kill Strout and bury the body. The smooth water swallows the gun that they throw in; the ripples “lap softly” but there are no waves or signs from nature that they have committed a crime. The disruption, silence, and complicity of the natural world have helped to rationalize the revenge killing.

Does a plant change/rearrange the chemicals it takes in during photosynthesis into new substances? Please give 1-2 examples.

The chemical rearrangements and changes that occur during photosynthesis are what have allowed most of the life forms on Earth to evolve. The basic equation for photosynthesis

6CO2 + 6H20 -----(light energy)---->C6H12O6 + 6O2

shows, in short hand form, that carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the presence of light energy change in form from molecules of carbon dioxide plus water to glucose plus oxygen.

As you can see from the formula above, the process begins...

The chemical rearrangements and changes that occur during photosynthesis are what have allowed most of the life forms on Earth to evolve. The basic equation for photosynthesis

6CO2 + 6H20 -----(light energy)---->C6H12O6 + 6O2

shows, in short hand form, that carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the presence of light energy change in form from molecules of carbon dioxide plus water to glucose plus oxygen.

As you can see from the formula above, the process begins with carbon and oxygen atoms bound together, as well as hydrogen with carbon. The 6-carbon sugar, glucose, that is formed from carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen represents a molecule that stores chemical energy that is then utilized by the plant, and any organism that happens to consume it. That, along with the free oxygen that is released, are the starting molecules for cellular respiration. The chemicals are again rearranged in this "reverse" equation to photosynthesis, releasing the stored energy for the organism in which it occurs. There are many intermediary steps in both processes, in which the chemicals are rearranged multiple times before becoming the final products.

What is Gene Forrester's internal war in A Separate Peace?

When discussing Gene Forrester's internal war, he thinks it centers around him versus his best friend Phineas; but it's really a matter of man vs. self. As a bildungsroman (a coming-of-age story) A Separate Peace explores many of the insecurities that face the average teenage boy. Gene suffers from jealousy, competitiveness, low self-esteem, pride and eventually guilt. The diagnosis?--a teenage boy.

Gene's internal war seems to manifest itself whenever he compares himself to Phineas. For...

When discussing Gene Forrester's internal war, he thinks it centers around him versus his best friend Phineas; but it's really a matter of man vs. self. As a bildungsroman (a coming-of-age story) A Separate Peace explores many of the insecurities that face the average teenage boy. Gene suffers from jealousy, competitiveness, low self-esteem, pride and eventually guilt. The diagnosis?--a teenage boy.

Gene's internal war seems to manifest itself whenever he compares himself to Phineas. For example, Phineas breaks the school swimming record but Gene was the only witness for the event. Finny graciously asks Gene not to tell anyone about it, mostly because he doesn't care about swimming as a sport. But Gene can't imagine why someone as competitive and athletic would not want to tell the whole school. Eventually, Gene is so jealous that he gets in an argument with Phineas; but Gene realizes the following:

"I found a single sustaining thought. The thought was, You and Phineas are even already. You are even in enmity. You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone. You did hate him for breaking the school swimming record, but so what? He hated you for getting an A in every course but one last term" (53).

Unfortunately for Gene, Phineas would not have had a second thought about Gene's grades if it weren't for the argument that Gene created. Gene figures this out later and thinks the following:

"He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he. I couldn't stand this" (59).

Gene's pride gets the best of him because he feels like such a fool by this point. And because he's competitive, Gene wants to make Finny look foolish for once in his life. Hence, he jounces the limb of a tree that Finny is standing on. As a result, Finny falls and breaks his leg so badly that doctors later tell him he will never play sports again.

Now Gene has to live with the guilt that his delusions have caused Phineas a life-long consequence--and guilt never does any good for a person's self-esteem. Guilt also fans the flame of a person's internal warfare. Gene must find a way to settle things with Finny and discover how he can become a better person and a better friend. If Gene finds a way to end the war within himself, he will find peace. Fortunately, in the end, Gene does find peace as he confesses to Phineas of all his misguided choices and for breaking his leg. He explains it best below:

"I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there" (204).

How would one write a summary of Andrew Clements' The Report Card?

To write a short summary of Andrew Clements' The Report Card, focus on explaining who the main characters are and what the main events are. The main events in any book will always be related to the conflict, climax, and resolution.

Andrew Clements' The Report Card is about Nora Rowley, a girl born a genius who decided the best thing to do was to hide her intelligence in order to seem like everyone else. She does so because she observes that people get jealous of others who are different from them and because, when she first discovered she wasn't normal, she felt like she was being pushed to perform her abilities, which she didn't like. After that, she very intentionally behaved in ways that made her seem like everyone else.

The conflict develops when she begins noticing her best friend Stephen is beginning to feel stupid because he felt so pressured to do well during the Connecticut Mastery Testing that he actually did very badly. After that, Nora developed a plan to show that neither bad nor good grades are true reflections of intelligence, since she intentionally earns average grades all the time but has a genius intelligence level. She carries out her plan by trying to intentionally earn all Ds on her fifth-grade report card.

The climax begins to develop as it becomes known that Nora is actually a genius who has been hiding her abilities all these years. Since her plan to expose the meaninglessness of grades was foiled once people saw her for the genius she truly is, she and Stephen develop another plan to encourage the whole class to earn nothing but zeros in order to protest against the weaknesses of the education system. In Nora's mind, the education system is weak because the lessons only encourage students to memorize, not think, while grades encourage needless competition. The climax occurs once it begins to look like Nora and Stephen will get into serious trouble for pursuing the plan.

As a resolution, Nora realizes that, though she was right to think poorly of the education and grading system, she was wrong to try and tackle changing the system all on her own. She further realizes that her actions caused more harm than good and apologizes to her classmates, encouraging them to continue to work hard.