Interpret the closing passage in "Araby."

"Araby" ends with this passage:

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

The narrator speaks these words as he leaves the bazaar after failing to find a gift for Mangan's sister that will impress her and win her love and approval. The passage expresses his disillusionment and the end of his dreams. The bazaar, Araby, had lived in the narrator's mind as a place of beauty and enchantment in contrast to the drabness of his life on North Richmond Street. To him it held the allure of romance. He says, "The syllables of the word Araby [sic] . . . cast an Eastern enchantment over me."

The narrator's illusions about Araby coincide with his feelings of first love for Mangan's sister. When he learns she wants to go to the bazaar but cannot, he promises to bring her a gift from Araby. He thus goes on a quest to win the heart of the woman he loves, a romantic adventure.

Araby turns out to be a cavernous warehouse filled with cheap goods. There is no enchantment. Araby is ordinary. Arriving at closing time, the narrator finds the lights going out and the help going home. He leaves, angry and disillusioned. He blames himself for being so foolish in believing that somehow his life could become more beautiful and exciting than the circumstances in which he lived.

I don't understand why the story is called "Shooting an Elelphant"?

The short story, "Shooting An Elephant," is so named because the plot revolves around a working elephant that breaks free from its master and rampages through a market, killing a man, a slave.

The authorities are called, and a Colonial Policeman arrives to discover that the elephant has moved away from the market and is now in a field, quietly grazing.  Because the crowd that observed the elephant's wild behavior demands that the animal be shot, the Colonial Policeman has no choice but to shoot the now calm working elephant.

The Colonial Policeman feels very uncomfortable with his job in Burma, he knows that the people resent him because he represents the British government who is ruling their country at this time.  Even though he does not want to shoot the elephant, to satisfy the crowd and the keep a measure of respect with the people he shoots the elephant because the local culture demands its destruction.

What is the significance of "Greasy Lake"?

On its surface, "Greasy Lake" is a story concerned with one night in the lives of three teenage buddies out of school for the summer, cruising around their small town, feeling pretty dangerous and looking for excitement. By the time the night ends, they have found more trouble than they had anticipated and enough excitement to last a lifetime. The narrator, who tells the story in retrospect, remembers they also behaved in disturbing ways they could not have imagined when they set out for the evening. The events at Greasy Lake include a violent fight, an attempted rape, an escape into the marsh, an underwater encounter with a corpse, and the destruction of the narrator's car--which doesn't belong to him.

The story works on a deeper level, however. It is an initiation story in which the narrator grows up during the course of one night. Telling the story in the voice of a mature adult, the narrator makes clear the distinction between the irresponsible boy he was at the beginning of the evening and the very shaken young man he becomes by the next morning. The boys who set out thinking they were "bad characters" emerge from Greasy Lake no longer looking for adventure. When some girls show up to offer them drugs and more adventure, the narrator is not enticed; instead, he feels like crying and can't leave fast enough.

In The Great Gatsby, what did Tom do after he and Daisy returned from their honeymoon?

Jordan remembers seeing Daisy in Santa Barbara as a new bride madly in love with Tom after their honeymoon in the South Seas. Daisy would "sit in the sand with his head in her hand by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight." But Tom betrays this devotion by having an affair with a hotel chambermaid. There's a scandal when he has a car accident one night with the chambermaid and rips "a front wheel off his car." The chambermaid appears in the news along with Tom, because she breaks her arm in the crash.

The story comes down to us from Jordan and then through Nick, but we have reason to believe it is true because Daisy, the first night she has Nick over to her home, alludes to being made miserable in her marriage and the fact that Tom is currently having an affair with a lower-class woman. Tom's earlier love affair, so soon after his marriage, lends credence to Nick's conclusion that Tom and Daisy are careless people who damage people and things and then move on, retreating into their vast fortune. This Santa Barbara car accident involving a lover foreshadows the later, more tragic accident with Myrtle, and also is more or less a repetition of the accident with Owl Eyes leaving Gatsby's.

Further, despite Tom's steadfast conviction that he and Gatsby have nothing in common, the circumstances of Tom's extravagant wedding, unlike anything Louisville had ever seen, the $350,000 strand of pearls he gives Daisy (expensive now, but stupendously expensive then) and the three-month honeymoon, sound not all that different from Gatsby's way of trying to woo Daisy with his wealth.

Comment on this quotation from The Pearl that begins, "The thin dog came to him and threshed itself in greeting like a wind-blown flag . . . ."

This passage takes on significance when it is contrasted with an earlier one. In the beginning of the story, Kino arises at dawn as another day begins. He steps outside to watch the sunrise, which is quite beautiful on the Gulf of Mexico. Alone on the beach, hears Juana inside preparing their breakfast while their baby sleeps. At this point, Kino is joined by a dog:

A thin, timid dog came close and, at a soft word from Kino, curled up, arranged its tail neatly over its feet, and laid its chin delicately on the pile [of sand]. It was a black dog with yellow-gold spots where its eyebrows should have been. It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.

Thus in the beginning of the story, Kino's life is beautiful and peaceful; he lives in harmony with the world around him.

Kino encounters the dog a second time in Part III of the story. At this time, Coyotito's illness has forced Kino and Juana away from their home and into the world at large. Kino has found the great pearl with its promises of riches beyond his previous imaginings. Kino is caught up in a new world of possibilities; his very identity has changed in the village. He is no longer Kino; he is the one who possesses The Pearl of the World as news his discovery spreads throughout the village and beyond. Alone on his beach at night, after all the neighbors have left, the dog approaches Kino again:

The thin dog came to him and threshed itself in greeting like a windblown flag, and Kino looked down at it and didn't see it. He had broken through the horizons into a cold and lonely outside. He felt alone and unprotected, and scraping crickets and shrilling tree frogs and croaking toads seemed to be carrying the melody of evil. Kino shivered a little . . . .

Kino's reaction to the dog, who greeted him as a friend, emphasizes to what extent Kino's world has changed. The warmth and harmony of his life has been destroyed, and he finds himself living in fear and isolation.

Please provide a short summary of "Pinballs."

"The Pinballs" by Betsy Byars is a wonderful story. The story begins with three foster children who are sent to live with the Masons, a married couple who cannot have children on their own. The children are removed from their home for different reasons.

When Harvey first arrives at the Mason home, he has two broken legs. His father had accidentally hit him with his new car during an argument. Harvey's mother left the family to live on a commune and he has not seen her since he was about 7 or 8-years-old. His father became a functioning alcoholic soon after.

 Thomas J finds himself with the Mason family when the 90-year-old twins who have been raising him both fall and break their hips (on the same day at the exact same time). Thomas J has no memory of his family. He was told by the twins that he simply wandered into their yard when he was about one year old. They meant to take him into the city to child services, but in their old age, they just never got around to it.

Carlie is the most outspoken of the three children and no longer lives at home because of the violence between her and her mother's boyfriend. Carlie is very rough around the edges and despite the violence in her home, she still believes that she will be back at home in a matter of weeks. The book gets its name because Carlie refers to herself and the other foster children as pin-balls that get bounced from one place to another.

The children are dealing with their own issues while trying to find a place in their new surroundings. Although they all come from different backgrounds, with the help of the Masons, the children learn that being a family means standing by each other in hard times and standing up for one another. It ends with them realizing that they are no longer pin-balls, because they have found one with each other.

This is an excellent novel to use when teaching characterization as the characters do change and grow from the beginning to the end of the story. It teaches themes like friendship, forgiveness, and of course family.

What is the summary of "The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde?

“The Nightingale and the Rose” is a story in which the first character that appears is a Student. This boy is sad because a girl promised to dance with him on condition that he brought her red roses, but he did not find any red rose; there were white roses and yellow roses, but he could not find red roses. While he was moaning because her love would not dance with him, four characters from nature started to talk about him. A little Green Lizard, a Butterfly and a Daisy asked why he was weeping, and the Nightingale said that he was weeping for a red rose. The first three characters said that weeping for a red rose was ridiculous. The Nightingale, who understood the Student, started to fly until she saw a Rose-tree. She told him to give her a red rose, and she promised, in exchange, to sing her sweetest song, but the Rose-tree told her that his roses were white, and he send the Nightingale to his brother that grew round the old sun-dial. The Nightingale went to see this new Rose-tree, and after promising the same in exchange for a red rose, the Rose-tree told her that his roses were yellow, but he send the Nightingale to his brother, who grew beneath the Student's window, so the Nightingale went there, and when she arrived, she asked the Rose-tree to give her a red rose. The Rose-tree said that his roses were red, but that the winter had chilled his veins and the frost had nipped his buds, so he could not give her a red rose. The Rose-tree gave her a solution: he told her that if she wanted a red rose, she had to build it out of music by moonlight and stain it with her own heart's blood. She had to sing to the Rose-tree with her breast against a thorn; the thorn would pierce her heart and her life-blood would flow into the Rose-tree veins. The Nightingale said that death was a great price to pay for a red rose, but at the end, she accepted. The Nightingale went to see the Student and told him that he would have his red rose, that it was her who was going to build it up with her own blood; the only thing she asked him for in return was to being a true lover. Although the Student looked at her, he could not understand anything because he only understood the things that were written down in books. But the Oak-tree understood and became sad because he was fond of the Nightingale, and asked her to sing the last song and when she finished, the Student thought that the Nightingale had form, but no feeling. At night, the Nightingale went to the Rose-tree and set her breast against the thorn. She sang all night long. She pressed closer and closer against the thorn until the thorn finally touched her heart and she felt a fierce pang of pain. The more the rose got the red colour, the fainter the Nightingale's voice became, and after beating her wings, she died. The rose was finished, but she could not see it. The next morning, the Student saw the wonderful rose under his window. He took it and went to see the girl and offered her the rose, but she just say that the rose would not go with her dress and that the Chamberlain's nephew had sent her real jewels and that everybody knew that jewels cost far more than flowers. After arguing with her, the Student threw the rose into a gutter, where a cart-wheel went into it, and he said that Love was a silly thing and that he preferred Logic and Philosophy.