How would you analyze Elinor Wylie's "Let no charitable hope" in terms of structure, tone, imagery, and language?

Wylie's poem is structured in three stanzas of four lines each. The rhyme scheme in each stanza is end rhyme in an abab pattern (e.g. stanza two: alone, beset, stone, get). The metrical structure is iambic tetrameter, although the first two lines incorporate syllabic variation and read more naturally like trimeter.

The tone of the poem shifts from gentle sarcasm in the first stanza to bitterness in the second stanza then to ridicule in...

Wylie's poem is structured in three stanzas of four lines each. The rhyme scheme in each stanza is end rhyme in an abab pattern (e.g. stanza two: alone, beset, stone, get). The metrical structure is iambic tetrameter, although the first two lines incorporate syllabic variation and read more naturally like trimeter.

The tone of the poem shifts from gentle sarcasm in the first stanza to bitterness in the second stanza then to ridicule in the third stanza. The tone is revealed through subtle contradiction or paradox in the last two lines of each stanza, as in stanza one's "images / Of eagle and of antelope: / I am in nature none of these." We are surprised to learn the images of charitable hope are meant to reveal herself to her in the hope she will rise above her limitations; she contradicts the charitable hope declaring she is "in nature none of these."

Wylie's imagery uses concrete objects in surprising associations. Concrete images of eagle and antelope are associated with misguided charitable hope. A stone squeezed is associated with the provision of nourishment. The various outrageous and austere years she has lived are associated with no fear, but all are associated with her gently ridiculing smile: "And none has quite escaped my smile."

Regarding language, Wylie's diction is poetic diction in that she uses metaphor, imagery, and symbolism in poetic style. Her vocabulary is ordinary for a person who is educated, as she was, and she uses neither slang nor an elevated vocabulary.

An interesting point of language is that Wylie manages, through subtle conjunction of words, to turn "charitable hope" and years being smiled upon into expressions of sarcasm and ridicule. Charitable hope is followed by "confuse my mind," expressing the image that the "charitable hope" is misguided and unfounded, which we find to be true: "I am in nature none of these." "[M]y smile" is preceded by "none has quite escaped," expressing the idea that, could the years do so, they would have been glad to escape her loveless smile of ridicule.

It is also interesting that the opening stanza uses "none" in "I am none of these" (she is none of the images conjured, as of powerful eagle or graceful antelope), and the closing stanza uses "none" in "But none has merited my fear, / And none has quite escaped my smile." provides a closed circle of thought tied together by the "none" that seems to define her sense of being, even to the point where she feels she is "squeezing from a stone / The little nourishment I get."

What is Rukmani’s family background? Why did she marry Nathan?

Rukmani grew up as the fourth and youngest daughter of a village headman. During her childhood years, her father had been a man of consequence and wealth.

As a result of their father's position, Rukmani's two eldest sisters had managed to make good matches; they married well, with the requisite dowries, jewelries, and lavish wedding ceremonies expected of daughters of a village headman. By the time her third sister married, however, Rukmani discovered that her...

Rukmani grew up as the fourth and youngest daughter of a village headman. During her childhood years, her father had been a man of consequence and wealth.

As a result of their father's position, Rukmani's two eldest sisters had managed to make good matches; they married well, with the requisite dowries, jewelries, and lavish wedding ceremonies expected of daughters of a village headman. By the time her third sister married, however, Rukmani discovered that her father's influence had been infinitely diminished. It was now the tax collectors who held all the power and consequence in the villages.

As a result of this change in affairs, Thangam, Rukmani's third sister, only managed to secure a modest wedding and to wed with minimal jewelry on her person. By the time Rukmani was to marry, the family could not afford a dowry at all. Without beauty and without a dowry of any sort, Rukmani was forced to marry an impoverished tenant farmer at the age of twelve. The family's poverty and lack of consequence meant that they could never hope to make a good match for Rukmani, even if they wanted to. This is why Rukmani ended up being married to Nathan.

Why might Mr. Hooper have put on the black veil in the story "The Minister's Black Veil"?

Your question correctly poses the conditional "might" as a venue to explain the potential reasons why Hooper makes the odd decision to wear a black veil in front of his face for the rest of his life. 

In reality, this is the one question in the story that never gets answered. The reactions that the veil elicits in the people of the village, however, can somewhat help us to conclude that Hooper purposely wanted to cause specific emotions among the people that reflect what lurks within their hearts. The ultimate reason why he would want this will still remain a mystery that the reader will have to deduce. 

A possible clue to help form a conclusion can be drawn from the minister's answers to his fiancée, Elizabeth, when she demands to know what is going on. Since they are engaged to be married, Elizabeth feels that she has a right to know what could be possibly driving her future husband to make a choice of this nature. However, Hooper's answers are problematic because they are not final. At one point he says to her that, if his veil were a symbol of mourning, 

"I perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil." "If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough . . . and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?"

If he is not willing to tell the woman that he intends to marry about his rationale, why would he tell anyone else?

Therefore, we can only speculate that the minister wore the veil to cause in the parishioners every possible feeling of uneasiness. Only by understanding exactly what causes their emotions could they be able to learn the inner fears and anxieties that lead them to feel them. This would be a lesson like no other that the minister would be teaching his flock. This also "might" have been the reason behind his decision. The best evidence for this theory is found at the end of the story, when Hooper confronts those visiting his deathbed and the emotions that he conjured in them through the simple fact of wearing a veil. 

"Why do you tremble at me alone? [...] Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil?"

Here he hits directly on how their inner fears are mirrored by the veil; hence, some equally dark and weird situations must be going on in their hearts. 

"What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? [...] When man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!"

With this, he directly states that he sees a veil in everyone, part of the masking and deception so typical to humans. Why fear the man who dares to expose the lies of the soul? This is a lesson he might have wanted to teach. 

In "A Walk on the Wild Side" by Nelson Algren, how did Kitty Twist turn into the "demented" Floralee? Are the two characters the same?

In the novel, the prostitutes who pretend to be virgins are supposed to cry and struggle a little before they succumb to Big Stingaree's "charms." Essentially, these prostitutes engage in play-acting to fulfill the perverted fantasies of Finnerty's male customers. For her part, Floralee flouts Finnerty's express orders on how to execute her role. When Big Stingaree tries to engage her in his role as chief "deflowerer," Floralee takes off every stitch of her clothing and begins to sing bawdy songs. It can be argued that Floralee is an uninhibited woman; however, her later actions show that her lifestyle has stripped her of dignity and hope. She is a broken woman, both mentally and spiritually.

Although the author contends that the trials of life can inspire personal growth, this isn't evident in Kitty Twist's and Floralee's cases. In the novel, Kitty Twist tries to get Finnerty to hire her as one of the "virgins." However, he refuses to do so, pointing out that Kitty has unsightly tattoos on her body. Kitty offers to keep her clothes on, but Finnerty's cynical response stops her in her tracks: "They’d want their money back...get down to the door where you’re supposed to be and don’t let me catch you off your post again."

Kitty Twist fails to understand on a psychological level the sort of deception she must engage in to qualify as a "virgin": "She did not perceive that had she only acted reluctant about performing, he would have appointed her to be deflowered upstairs instead of merely to stand guard below, hour upon dull hour." In other words, Kitty lives in a "twisted" world, where the line that separates reality from fantasy has been grossly blurred.

On the other hand, Floralee has existed in this world for so long that she can no longer differentiate between reality and fantasy. In the novel, we learn that she was initially Finnerty's lover before he became her pimp ("First he had made her his pleasure, then he had made her his trade"). Whenever she fails to live up to Finnerty's expectations of how a "virgin" should act, Finnerty beats her. Their relationship is dysfunctional on more than a physical level. Floralee's descent into madness is inevitable, and eventually Kitty Twist also displays a similar psychosis. Floralee believes that God has rejected her, while Kitty Twist wishes that death would claim her. Knowing that life has passed her by, Kitty Twist becomes apathetic:

She didn’t care for anything or anyone, least of all herself. Anything that happens has a right to happen, so what does it matter who it happens to? That was how Kitty felt.

It is obvious by the end of the novel that Kitty Twist is no different than the demented Floralee: the women's lifestyles have so degraded them that they no longer care to differentiate between reality and fantasy. 

What is the analysis of the character of the Duchess in "My Last Duchess"?

The Duke, who narrates the poem, is an unreliable narrator. Thus in trying to determine the character of the Duchess, we have the problem that we cannot trust our only source of information.

The basic facts of which we can be certain are that she was married to the Duke, that she was young and probably beautiful, that she died, and that the Duke is negotiating for a second wife. We can also assume that she was a member of the nobility.

The Duke portrays her as flirtatious and disloyal. He objects to the way she "thanked men" and suggests that rather than favoring him, her husband, she treated him just like any other man rather than loving or respecting him as a husband.

As readers, though, we cannot trust the Duke, who appears insanely jealous and paranoid and may well have had her murdered. She may well have been simply polite and pleasant. Eventually, we cannot determine her real character because we are not given an account by a reliable witness. 

What is heroic about the Seafarer?

This an interesting question, because the poem alludes to two different cultural conceptions of heroism -- the early, pre-Christian, Germanic conception, and the Christian one.

The seafarer himself exhibits some aspects of the pre-Christian heroism: He's tough and voluntarily takes on dangerous, harsh challenges. But he's not the classic hero from the pre-Christian age. He doesn't slay monsters or do battle as a warrior. He doesn't receive the rewards of treasure and praise. Instead, his acts are heroic in a different sense. He doesn't work to glorify himself, but to obey the will of God.

In the second half of the poem, he draws analogies between his physical voyages on the sea and his attempts to live up to the demands of Christianity. He, a good Christian, is a voluntary exile for God. Thus, he employs some of the Germanic heroic virtues -- being tough, choosing a life of danger -- in the service of doing God's work.

We can see this unfold in the text. First, the poem describes the narrator as having faced great dangers on the sea. He has toiled alone, endured " earfoðhwile," or times of struggle, coping with terrible, tossing waves that sometimes threatened to dash his ship near the cliffs (lines 1-8). He's been covered -- hung about -- with icicles ("bihongen hrimgicelum" in the original text) and showered by hail (line 17).

Of course, suffering and endurance aren't necessarily the same thing as heroism. But the narrator also tells us that he chooses to face these hardships. Whereas city dwellers enjoy an easy life on land, he feels the pull to return to the sea (lines 33-38, from the Owl Eyes translation ):

And how my heart

Would begin to beat, knowing once more

The salt waves tossing and the towering sea!

The time for journeys would come and my soul

Called me eagerly out, sent me over

The horizon, seeking foreigners' homes.

So the seafarer is tough, brave, bold, and ready to seek out danger. But in the middle of the poem, the narrator notes that traditional Germanic heroism is becoming a thing of the past, and in any case the rewards it brings -- riches, praise, and a glorious reputation on earth -- don't last forever. And while the narrator might seem to be nostalgic for those times, he hints that traditional Germanic heroism is egotistical. In the second half of the poem, the seafarer likens his physical adventures on the sea with the self-abnegation and asceticism demanded of the good Christian, and he lays out how the Christian's virtues differ from the traditional values of Germanic heroism (lines 106-112):

Death leaps at the fools who forget their God.

He who lives humbly has angels from Heaven

To carry him courage and strength and belief.

A man must conquer pride, not kill it,

Be firm with his fellows, chaste for himself,

Treat all the world as the world deserves,

With love or with hate but never with harm…

Thus, the poem is outlining a different conception of heroism, one that de-emphasizes personal glory and requires turning the other cheek. It's consistent with what scholar Catherine Woeber sees as the central theme of Christian heroism in many Anglo Saxon poems -- something that means

"more than brave battling on the side of God; rather, it is complete submission to the will of God."

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Reference

Marsden R. 2004. The Cambridge Old English Reader. Cambridge University Press. 

Weber, Catherine. 1995. Heroism in three Old English poems: A Christian approach Koers 60(3) 359-379.

In Ayn Rand's Anthem, why do Equality's teachers disapprove of his quick mind?

Within the first few pages of Ayn Rand's Anthem, Equality speaks about growing up in the society in which he was born. His experiences with teachers during his schoolboy years are significant to the story because this is when he learns that he is different from other boys. For example, he remembers that lessons in school came to him easily. In fact, he is so bright in school that he can predict what teachers say about lessons before they finish explaining certain concepts. Being intelligent and able to learn things easily sets Equality apart from his brothers, which also places a figurative target on his back because it is a crime to be different or better at anything in this society.

Equality isn't just different, though; he is superior to his schoolmates. Superiority is worse than simply being a little bit different. Superiority means that Equality has in him the capacity to become someone great, and this scares his teachers. Again, in this entirely equal society, no one is allowed to be better than anyone else. Equality explains as follows: 

"It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked upon us" (21).

Equality also receives "lashes" when the teachers feel as though he is exhibiting any superior traits at school. The teachers try to keep Equality's individuality and intelligence under control so he cannot upset their society with his differences. The whole society exists under the following motto:

"We are one in all and all in one.

There are no men but only the great WE,

One, indivisible and forever" (19).

Their government, which favors society's needs over those of individuals, does not like to see anyone thinking or acting differently from the others. Individuality leads to self-promotion, ambition, and inequality; therefore, the teachers, who are an extension of the government, do their best to squash Equality's divergent tendencies in order to keep their society functioning as one equal whole.