What two gifts does his father give Matt before he leaves?

Before Matt's father left for Massachusetts to pick up Matt's younger sister and pregnant mother, he gave him two special items that would later play a part in the story.

Because Matt would be alone once his father left, he needed a way to protect himself and acquire food. Matt's father left Matt his own rifle, a much better one than Matt had. The rifle was a valuable possession, but his father wanted to be...

Before Matt's father left for Massachusetts to pick up Matt's younger sister and pregnant mother, he gave him two special items that would later play a part in the story.

Because Matt would be alone once his father left, he needed a way to protect himself and acquire food. Matt's father left Matt his own rifle, a much better one than Matt had. The rifle was a valuable possession, but his father wanted to be as sure as he could be that Matt was safe and able to procure food.

He also left Matt a silver watch that was a family heirloom. Though Matt did not necessarily need it to tell time, his father hoped that in some way the watch would help keep Matt company.

Both items eventually played a large part in the story's plot. The rifle was stolen early in the story when a stranger insisted on spending the night in Matt's cabin. The silver watch served as a final parting gift for Attean near the end of the story when Attean and his tribe moved away from the area where Matt lived.

What makes a good Bachelor's essay? I need some ideas and rules.

For a complete set of rules about your Bachelor's essay, you should consult your school or college. In general, Bachelor's essays are research projects that seniors in college carry out. The essays focus on independent research, and students generally work with a faculty member or professor to craft their research and writing. A good Bachelor's essay examines a new aspect of something you have studied and includes carefully documented independent research. In addition, a good...

For a complete set of rules about your Bachelor's essay, you should consult your school or college. In general, Bachelor's essays are research projects that seniors in college carry out. The essays focus on independent research, and students generally work with a faculty member or professor to craft their research and writing. A good Bachelor's essay examines a new aspect of something you have studied and includes carefully documented independent research. In addition, a good essay makes an argument and defends it using appropriate evidence.

To find the right idea, look at what you have studied. What has sparked your interest? What do you want to know more about? For example, if you have studied history, is there an event, question, person, or recurring theme in history that you want to dig into? If you are interested in military history, you could focus on a particular war, including the reasons that war was fought or first-person accounts of that war. If you studied English or literature in a foreign language, go back and study a book you enjoyed and look for books that are in that same literary movement. You can start by reading literary criticism to try to figure out how the titles are related.

After going back to what you have studied, you will start by crafting a provisional thesis, or main idea, that makes an argument that you can prove. After sharing this idea with your advisor, you will likely go on to do additional research, followed by writing and revising. In all your work, it is important to document and cite your sources carefully to avoid plagiarism and to construct a works cited section. While working, be sure to follow your school's guidelines and deadlines. The link below is to Hamilton College's list of senior thesis topics from 2015.

I need help with the analysis of the poem "The Mower's Song" by Andrew Marvell. Is a political interpretation of this poem possible?

To begin, Andrew Marvell lived and wrote in the 17th century, and his political views shifted throughout his life and career. Particularly in his later works, Marvell was somewhat critical of the rigidity of the established church and royal court of England.

"The Mower's Song" is a poem about unrequited love, but it is not only a poem about a broken heart. The mower is at odds with the classic English meadows; he suddenly resents them...

To begin, Andrew Marvell lived and wrote in the 17th century, and his political views shifted throughout his life and career. Particularly in his later works, Marvell was somewhat critical of the rigidity of the established church and royal court of England.

"The Mower's Song" is a poem about unrequited love, but it is not only a poem about a broken heart. The mower is at odds with the classic English meadows; he suddenly resents them and the brutal manicuring he does to them as the mower. This correlates to Marvell's resentment of the self-indulgent, formal, and materialistic nature of institutions. Just as the growth of the meadow is impeded by the destructive mower, so too is progress impeded by the stodgy values of church and royalty.

Consider the following lines from the poem:

Unthankful meadows, could you so 

      A fellowship so true forgo? 

      And in your gaudy May-games meet 

      While I lay trodden under feet? 

Extracted from the context of Juliana's cruelty, these lines seem quite political indeed. Essentially, when the speaker asks, "And in your gaudy May-games meet / While I lay trodden under feet?" Marvell asks the reader, "How can the established institutions revel in their formalities while England suffers from a lack of progress?" Just as Juliana scorns the poor mower's love and the mower tramples the grass for his work, the English establishment thwarts the nation's ability to embrace modernity.

What is the narrator's state of mind as the story opens?

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" is famously cited for its ability to evoke a sense of dread within the reader. One of the few tales of Poe's that actually has a relatively "happy" ending, this story centers around a man who is sentenced to a torturous death during the Spanish Inquisition.

At the beginning of the story, the narrator appears to be very delirious. He claims that he is "sick unto death...

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" is famously cited for its ability to evoke a sense of dread within the reader. One of the few tales of Poe's that actually has a relatively "happy" ending, this story centers around a man who is sentenced to a torturous death during the Spanish Inquisition.

At the beginning of the story, the narrator appears to be very delirious. He claims that he is "sick unto death with that long agony" and that his senses leave him as he is sentenced to die. This beginning is very impactful because it starts the story with immediate foreshadowing of the dark matter that is to come; the reader is immediately told of the conflict of the story. The narrator is sentenced to die, and that experience alone is enough to make any man mentally unstable. The narrator describes his state as "delirious horror" and cannot even hear the words that are spoken by the court that decides his fate. His state of panic foreshadows the desperation that he will possess later in the story when he is confronted with the torture chamber and the many efforts to destroy him.

Who are the main characters in the novel, and what are their roles in the overall plot of the novel?

Son of the Revolution is not a novel, but it certainly reads like one. It is a fascinating, searing, and, at times, deeply tragic firsthand account of the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in China. As we will see, the characters in the book and how they develop reflect the bewildering, frightening pace of change during this tumultuous period of Chinese history.

The story is told through the eyes of Liang Heng. He has been brought up in the People's Republic of China, a country under the firm grip of a Communist regime led by Chairman Mao. Both his parents are fanatically devoted to the Communist cause, and Liang grows up in an environment steeped in the reigning ideology.

In their unthinking devotion to the cause, both of Liang's parents display varying degrees of naivety. This will, in due course, come to have serious consequences for their family. We first witness this during the so-called "Hundred Flowers" campaign which began in 1956. This was an attempt by the government to encourage intellectuals to speak out against government policies and make complaints about abuses in the Communist system. Many of the subsequent criticisms were incredibly harsh; they were certainly too harsh for the government, which quickly backtracked on the campaign and returned to its default position of systemic repression.

During the Hundred Flowers campaign, Liang's mother had taken the opportunity to utter mild public criticisms against a supervisor. Unfortunately for her, this was held against her after the campaign was suddenly brought to a halt. The subsequent backlash against so-called "Rightists" caught Liang's mother in a new, bloody wave of oppression, resulting in her being publicly humiliated and sent into the countryside for "re-education" through labor.

Liang's father, Liang Shan, is different. He remains fanatically loyal to the regime despite its ill-treatment of his wife. As far as he is concerned, the Party is always right, even if it means that he has to divorce his wife (which he does). Because of his cold-blooded sacrifice of his marriage, we can see Liang's father as a symbol of what is about to come: a wave of fanatical terror that will sweep the land, destroying families and leaving chaos and bloodshed in its wake. 

Yet, at this stage of his life, Liang bears no ill-will toward his father. In fact, the opposite is true. Instead, he feels great resentment toward his mother for speaking out during the Hundred Flowers campaign. As far as he is concerned, she is the one to blame for his growing isolation and ostracism at school.

The onset of the Cultural Revolution changes the whole dynamic of the characters' lives and their relation to each other. Liang joins the Red Guards, shock troops of the Cultural Revolution and fanatically devoted to helping Mao drive out those in the Party deemed insufficiently radical. The campaign, however, quickly gets out of hand, taking on a dangerous, hysterical complexion as Mao's acolytes launch a full-scale attack against all forms of authority, anything that smacks of the old ways.

Ironically, it is now Liang's father, the staunch Maoist, who is denounced. Because he has a brother in capitalist Taiwan, he is immediately made suspect in the eyes of the Red Guards, despite his professed loyalty to the regime. In order to remove the taint of suspicion from himself, Liang must completely condemn his father and join so-called "struggle sessions," in which Liang Shan is publicly humiliated and harangued by a baying mob of Red Guards. The respective roles of father and son have been reversed. The inter-generational conflict at the heart of the Cultural Revolution is now made starkly clear in microcosm.

Yet, there is a greater irony still. Although outwardly Liang appears more fanatical than his father, it is noticeable that he is the first to have serious doubts about the Revolution and its course. The inevitable collapse of the Cultural Revolution into factionalism and internecine warfare causes Liang to become thoroughly disillusioned. He witnesses firsthand the poverty, hunger, and disease wrought by the Communist regime on the countryside. The Revolution idealizes peasant life yet, in its ignorant fanaticism, it undermines and destroys it, leading to widespread human suffering.

As the story progresses, we gradually see Liang Shan start to take on a different role in the story. Despite his appalling experiences, he still retains a sense of self, a sense of who he really is beneath the hardline Communist exterior. As a condemned "Rightist" and intellectual, he is doubly damned. Despite this, he still finds that the peasants look to him for instruction in Party policy. He is still a teacher, still a figure of authority. Despite all that has happened to him, his inner spirit has not been totally crushed. 

Much the same could be said of Liang Heng. He understands the importance of education and learning and strives to achieve his academic goals. His father has, in his own little way, pointed toward the recovery of a sense of one's self, a sense of one's own inner drives. However, he is too old and too set in his ways to redevelop his true self in a meaningful direction. That role falls to his son, Liang Heng. Through his education, his skill at basketball, and his love for Judy, he finally sees a way out. In doing so, he remains true to himself and the inner core of his being, irrespective of the various trials and tribulations that he has endured.

I need a summary for chapter 1, 2, 3, and 5.

Chapter 1: Matt is preparing for a campout with other members of an adventure club, but has to finish up his vegetables. While trying to sneakily dispose of them, his little sister Katie notices this and Matt brings her along to stop her from telling their parents.

Chapter 2: The meeting has now started with Tony, Q, and Hooter, Matt’s friends. Matt reads from a story from Great Adventures in Historyregarding George Washington’s crossing...

Chapter 1: Matt is preparing for a campout with other members of an adventure club, but has to finish up his vegetables. While trying to sneakily dispose of them, his little sister Katie notices this and Matt brings her along to stop her from telling their parents.

Chapter 2: The meeting has now started with Tony, Q, and Hooter, Matt’s friends. Matt reads from a story from Great Adventures in History regarding George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River. Katie, who is ordered to stay inside a tent by Matt, begins complaining loudly. Hooter and Tony decide to let her out.

Chapter 3: Matt decides to add some excitement to this adventure by taking everyone on a hike to a nearby lake.

Chapter 5: On the way, Matt mentions a story he heard from his grandfather about Lake Levart. On certain nights when a three-quarter moon is present, an enchanted rowboat would appear and take people on mysterious adventures. Curiously enough, there is a three-quarter moon currently in the sky, and Katie is found looking at a peculiar rowboat that is approaching. Matt and his friends attempt to rescue her, but they all eventually climb onto the boat and the crew vanishes in a mist.

What is the initiating event in "The Open Window"?

The initiating event in "The Open Window" is the arrival of Framton Nuttel at the home of the Sappletons. He is a complete stranger who comes with a letter of introduction from his sister, a woman whom Mrs. Sappleton may not even remember. Obviously, Mrs. Sappleton is caught off guard. She has to enlist her niece Vera to stand in for her while she gets ready to receive their visitor. The entire story is told through Framton's point of view. He is not a very attractive guest because he is so wrapped up in his nervous disorder. Vera probably doesn't like being dragooned into serving as a substitute hostess at a moment's notice. She may have been interrupted in her reading. The mischievous fifteen-year-old girl decides to play a practical joke on the visitor, and in doing so Vera reveals a lot about the dreary routine of the Sappleton household. The men never think about or talk about anything but shooting birds. Her aunt seems housebound and has probably rarely heard much talk about anything but birds; consequently that seems all she ever talks about herself.

Mrs. Sappleton is devoted to her husband and her two young brothers. Vera knows her aunt will sit there staring at the open window while she talks about birds to poor, ill-at-ease Framton. Her aunt will be looking forward to the arrival of the three hunters for tea. But Vera has spun a story about how the three hunters died three years ago when they were sucked into a bog. Everything her aunt and the three hunters say and do ties in nicely with the girl's ghost story. Framton must believe that Mrs. Sappleton is mentally deranged, as Vera has told him. 

"Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window - "

When Mrs. Sappleton suddenly cries, "Here they are at last!" and Vera is looking at the open window with a faked expression of "dazed horror" on her hitherto "sell-possessed" young face, Framton reacts with terror. The three returning hunters, who have only been gone for the day, look as if they must be Mr. Sappleton and his wife's young brothers returning from the dead.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms...

And Bertie makes their identities certain when he breaks into a song that only he could know.

Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.