Why is Dill crying in To Kill a Mockingbird?

The emotions of the trial are running high for everyone. Everyone in the courtroom are hot and tired, and Tom is on the stand. Atticus does his best to show everyone that there was no way Tom could have done what he was accused of doing. The prosecutor is now getting ready to cross examine Tom.

Jem, Scout and Dill, are all sitting in the balcony with the black people of the town. They have been in the courthouse everyday. The children are so convinced that Atticus is going to get Tom free. When the prosecutor starts drilling Tom, Dill's emotions start to take over. He is just a child, and to see that the prosecutor is being mean to Tom, makes Dill feel so sad for Tom. He breaks down into tears by seeing Tom treated so badly. Scout is aware of this change in Dill.

"For some reason Dill had started crying and couldn't stop, quietly at first, then his sobs were heard by several people in the balcony."

I think it is touching that the children are sitting with the black people and they are the ones who hear Dill's cries. He is showing them that he is full of compassion for this innocent man. 

Why is Brian visiting his father in Canada, and how does Brian feel about his mother?

Brian’s parents have recently divorced. Under the court order, Brian spends the school year with his mother and the summers with his Dad. His father is in Canada, and Brian is bringing him some special equipment to assist with his work in oil drilling.

Brian’s father doesn’t understand why Brian’s mother wanted a divorce, and he is opposed to it. Brian carries the uncomfortable burden of knowing that his mother is having an affair. His mother doesn’t know that he knows, and his father knows nothing about it.

Brian’s last time with his mother was a bit uncomfortable – he didn’t want to answer her questions about what was wrong, yet he wanted to make her happy by carrying the hatchet she had given him.

What would be some very good compare/contrast points when comparing the stories "A Rose for Emily" and "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"?

The most obvious would be the characters of Miss Emily and Granny Weatherall.  Both are very stubborn old women who are set in their ways and ho have jaded views of reality.  Both harbor resentments about their pasts, too.  Both women have also been betrayed and jilted.  Emily, for example, has been betrayed by her father because of the way he raised her.  He did not let her have a normal childhood and adolescence because he kept her so sheltered.  Granny Weatherall was jilted by George, who left her at the altar, and by Hapsy, her child who died.  There are many more similiarities and quite a few differences, too!

Another similarity is the setting. Both stories are set in Southern states.  Both women also have similar value systems that are clearly Southern in nature. 

Some of the differences include the authors' writing styles, the themes of the stories, and the tones of each story.

Give a short account of British poetic drama in the 20th Century.

I can do "English Verse Drama in the 20th Century" in four words: it didn't catch on.

Writers in English tend constantly to hark back to Shakespeare. And early in the 20th century, everyone was making a lot of fuss about the fact that Shakespeare wrote in verse. Everyone got very excited about the meaning and the import of verse, we created the phrase "verse-speaking" (even today, you will hear moronic theatregoers say entirely meaningless things like "they spoke the verse well") and there were a lot of articles written.

T.S. Eliot was the first, in an essay called "The Possibility of a Poetic Drama" in 1920 (linked below), to suggest that verse drama - drama in which the dialogue is written in a specific poetic meter - could be reintroduced. Eliot wrote a whole load of poetic plays, including "Murder in the Cathedral", and "The Family Reunion", that were popular successes. But other writers didn't really follow where Eliot led.

Later - in the 1930s/40s - Christopher Fry wrote a host more plays written in verse, including "The Lady's Not For Burning". They were successful, but again, it didn't catch on.

Even today, the poet Tony Harrison writes plays in verse, most recently a new play called "Fram". I could throw in more names before Eliot (Yeats, Synge) and after (Auden, MacNeice, Beckett) who have written poetic dramas. But, since the 16th century, verse drama has just never found its way back into the main blood of British Theatre.

How do Shylock's speeches reflect his character in "The Merchant of Venice"?Analyze Shylock's rhetoric and elements of voice paying special...

Let me first make a caveat: although we can all spot the SAME features of Shylock's language, what they tell us about his character is subjective. There's no absolute right answers.

The first thing I notice about Shylock is that he constantly repeats himself:

I will be assured I may; and, that I may be assured,
I will bethink me.

...let him look to his bond: he was wont to
call me usurer; let him look to his bond: he was
wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him
look to his bond.

There are lots more examples (see the link below for a complete list of Shylock's utterances).

Shylock's motto - "Fast bind, fast find" - is, like much of his language, rhythmic, pared right down to the bone, and repetitive. His speech is full of antitheses (balancing one thing against another - as "find" is balanced with "bind" in the quote above) and with an almost obsessive need for even his words to be fitted exactly into place courtesy of a verbal pattern or rhythm. This, you might think, is appropriate for a man obsessed with his money and his things being exactly as he wants them, where he wants them.

John Gross has pointed out that Shylock's speech is full of "linguistic idiosyncracies": words like "synagogue" and "Nazarite" are not found elsewhere in Shakespeare's canon, nor is "moneys", Shylock's odd plural of "money". This, surely, is to mark out Shylock's foreignness in Venice. He is also a direct, plain-speaker in a play full of lyrical poetry.

What are some key themes in Walt Whitman's poetry?

I think that Whitman was something of a mystic in that he saw all of us as part of the whole; but it was the democratic whole.  He saw himself as the poet that Emerson called for; Emerson saw him as the poet who answered his challenge.

This yields two themes:  the unity of all being (and, if you read his endless lists of "things," none of which are subjugated to another but all treated as equal you understand where this is coming from.  The other is American as the fulfillment of the democratic idea.  This is similar to his mystical view of the unity of all things, but is more political, more based in the reality of what he saw and lived with.

Indians, blacks, Irish, gays, straighs, men, prostitutes, laborers, women, old, young ... these were all part of the theoretical unity of being, expressed in the structure of America.

In a "Rose for Emily," what was the smell that was referred to in section II. Was it Homer or her father? Please explain why.

In the short story "A Rose for Emily," the reader is not told what the smell is that is coming from Miss Emily's home.  It cannot, however, be her father.  Emily's dad passed away two years before this smell occurred and although she would not at first let anyone take her father's body, she did eventually relent to having him buried.

The reader can however infer that the smell is from the rotting body of her male friend, Homer.  Since he has disappeared, has not been seen, and shortly thereafter a rotten smell comes from her house, we are pretty safe in saying it is the decaying body of Homer. She wouldn't have told anyone because she was not about to have him taken from her.