What is the main function of the fool in "King Lear"? What is the secondly function?

The fool as a character is confusing, but part of this is the difference between the 1600s and today, as well as the difference in place. If somebody made a joke about your local sports team, would people several hundred years from now get it?

Shakespeare also wrote his plays for his group of actors, and the original actor portraying fool was a comedian of sorts, that was the type of character he played. So it can be really hard to understand the fool. 

He does serve as a counter to Lear, especially in the Storm scene, a kind of reasonable-ish counterpart to the absolutely insane Lear. The fool's position also gives him the ability to say things that no body else can say, even if they believe them. He is the ultimate character allowed to "speak truth to power."

What is elasticity of demand?

The price elasticity of demand, sometimes simply called price elasticity, measures how much the quantity demanded of a good changes when its price changes. The precise definition of price elasticity is:

The percentage change in quantity demanded divided by the percentage change in price.

ED = (percentage change in quantity demanded) / (percentage change in price)

Economic factors determine the size of price elasticities of individual goods. Elasticities tend to be higher when the goods are luxuries, when substitutes are available, and when consumers have more time to adjust their behavior.

When ED > 1, the good has price-elastic demand. In this case a price decrease increases total revenue.

When ED < 1, the good has price-inelastic demand. In this case a price decrease decreases total revenue.

When ED = 1, the good has unit-inelastic demand. Under this condition total revenue stays the same even when the price changes.

When ED = 0, the demand is completely inelastic.

When ED is infinite the demand is completely elastic. Even the tiniest change in price causes a huge change in quantity demanded, so huge that, for all intents and purposes, we can call the response infinite. When demand is perfectly elastic, then no matter how much people are buying, the demand curve will be a horizontal line. The demand for a single brand of salt may fall into this category.

In The Outsiders, what differences can be seen between Ponyboy and Johnny? I just found about school, and aboutt theirs family's background. What...

Other than their backgrounds, there are a few differences between the two characters.  Ponyboy is definitely a stronger character in terms of the mental anguish that he is able to deal with.  Pony is constantly fighting with his brother; however, it does not affect him the way that Johnny’s relationship with his parents affects him.  This could have to do with the difference in the two relationships but it is a character difference as well – the end of the novel does a great job of showing Ponyboy’s strength.  Johnny is also always nervous while Ponyboy seems to be able to handle situations with ease most of the time.  Finally, Johnny makes rash and impetuous decisions while Ponyboy always seems to think things through before he acts on anything.  

How does Laura Esquivel use literary devices to build the mood in "Like Water for Chocolate"?

Esquivel uses several literary devices, including foreshadowing, metaphors, symbolism, imagery, and hyperbole, in order to create different moods in her novel, "Like Water for Chocolate." For example, passion is apparent when foreshadowing is introduced. John tells Tita about his grandmother's theory of love and life. She said that "each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves." We need the breath of the person we love to light them and thus nourish our souls. She warns, however, that lighting the matches all at once would be fatal. This process occurs at the end of the novel when Pedro's suppressed passion for Tita is finally "lit," and the intense flame is too much for him to bear. It is then that he dies of a heart attack and she is consumed by a literal and metaphoric/symbolic flame.

Imagery and hyperbole are also helpful in constructing mood in the novel. Through the vivid descriptions of Tita's magical cooking, the reader can imagine the smells, tastes, and feelings that the food evokes. Also, magic realism is evident when these feelings of love, sadness, lust, and resentment are exaggerated through the characters as they cause orgasms, sobs, and even death.

What is the relationship between me and the daughter of my mother's sister? Actually, my mother is not directly related to her mother.

Many riddles or "messy" problems begin with an apparent conundrum and they intentionally mislead the reader by the way they are phrased. Solving a riddle routinely requires original thought and resourcefulness although the answers are often almost ridiculously simple with hindsight. This question poses a simplistic riddle. Problem-solving techniques help to solve riddles as analytical skills are needed. The reader or problem-solver must look beyond any unnecessary detail by analyzing information in order to solve the problem. The idea is to search for key information and to break questions into smaller parts. In problem-solving, the difficulty lies in trying to find the overall answer without taking time to consider each step. Each step has to be considered on its own merit and as part of the whole.

To consider the relationship described in the question requires breaking the question down into elements. First find the potential answers to the each part. 

1. My mother's sister would be my aunt.

2. The daughter of my mother's sister would be my mother's niece. 

3. This would make me and the daughter of my mother's sister cousins.

4. My gender, male or female has no bearing on the question.

However, the question has another element. If my mother is not "directly" relater to her mother and yet they are sisters, the reader has to decide if this is relevant to the question and if it will in fact change the answer at all or if the information, upon analysis is unnecessary for the purposes of finding the answer.

There is a need therefore to understand "directly."

1. It could mean that the are not biologically-related. The reader can deduce that this will not change the answer as the statement has been made that they are nonetheless sisters. 

2. It could mean that they are step-sisters and so have no biological connection. Again, the answer remains the same. Interestingly, this answer could change if there were any marriages within step-families.  

3. It could be that the term sister is used for sister-in-law. This means that either the "sister" is my father's sister  (and so my mother's sister-in-law) so the answer remains the same because the daughter is my father's niece in this case anyway. It could be my mother's brother's wife which makes her my uncle's wife which means the answer still remains the same.  

The answer to this riddle is, as aforesaid, that we are cousins. 

Explain Claudius' comments to Hamlet regarding his father's death. What advice is given?

In Act 1, Scene 2. Claudius is trying to lift Hamlet out of his depression. He thinks the depression is caused by the death of Hamlet's father. So, he says to Hamlet that Hamlet's father lost his father, and his father lost his father, etc. Thus, death of a father is a natural thing and Hamlet ought to snap out of it. Then he says, "think of us[Claudius] as your father. This is probably one of the worst condolences Claudius could choose. What he doesn't realize is that one of the reasons Hamlet is so depressed is that such a short time has passed since his father's death and his mother has just married his uncle. During Elizabethan times, when the play was written, this act would have been considered incest---not to mention tasteless and unthinking. But Claudius is so wrapped up in his new power, that he can't imagine why Hamlet would be upset.

What is the summary for Chapter 1 of Into the Wild?

Jim Gallien, a union electrician, picks up a hitchhiker about four miles out of Fairbanks on Tuesday, April 28, 1992.  The hitchhiker introduces himself only as "Alex", and asks for a ride to the edge of Denali National Park, from which point he will walk "deep into the bush and 'live off the land for a few months'".  Alex, a congenial young man who looks to be only eighteen or nineteen, shows Gallien a map of the Stampede Trail, a seldom-traveled road which winds "for forty miles or so before petering out...(in a) trackless wilderness north of Mt. McKinley".  This is where Alex intends to go.

Gallien is concerned because Alex seems woefully underprepared for such an undertaking.  He carries only a small rifle and a backpack weighing just "twenty-five or thirty pounds", and admits that he is afraid of water and that the only food he has is a ten-pound bag of rice.  Gallien tries to dissuade Alex from what appears to be a foolhardy endeavor, but says, "There was just no talking the guy out of it".  He offers to drive Alex back to Anchorage to buy him "some decent gear", but the young man declines.  Gallien finally convinces Alex to take "an old pair of rubber work boots" he has in the truck, and the lunch his wife had packed for him earlier in the day.  Gallien drops Alex off at the trailhead, and watches as the young man "disappear(s) down the snow-covered track" (Chapter 1).