What 5 quotes from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn show the theme of Huck vs. his conscience?

Twain wrote, "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience."

Ch 3 Miss Watson, a slave owner, tells Huck if he prays he will get anything, but he does not receive the fish hooks he prays for. When asked why, Miss Watson says he "was a fool...." I couldn't make it out no way." Huck is in moral conflict with received values.

Ch 8 After running away, Huck discovers Jim, helps him knowing it is wrong. "All right then, I'll just go to hell" he decides.

Ch 13 Huck and Jim board a wrecked steamboat for provisions finding two thieves tied to the deck. Although they are criminals, Huck says,"my conscience got to stirring," so he alerts the watchman. "I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferryboat start."

Ch 16 Current separates Jim and Huck who calls in vain, but takes a "cat nap." A tearful Jim finds Huck who lies to cover up his negligence. Jim tells him only "trash" lies; "It was 15 minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger--but I done it."

Ch 23 When the Duke and King sell off Jim as a slave, Huck pretends, "It's a good job they got him." He wrestles with his conscience, "it would be...better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was...," but he lies-"I was playing double"-that he will write Mrs. Watson. But, when he and Jim are together, he can not "harden me against him."

How does the writer make the setting help to tell the story, "Great Expectations"?

Perhaps the most memorable setting in "Great Expectations" is that of Satis [Enough] House and its occupants, particularly Miss Havisham. As stated above, the setting does, indeed, help describe the character in it. Pip describes his visit:

...the first thing I noticed was that the passages were all dark....

In an armchair...sat the strangest I have ever seen, or shall ever see.  She was dressed in rich materials...all in white (as a bride), but her hair was white....She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one sho on....

But I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white had lost its luster, and was faded and yellow.  I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress....the clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

'So new to him,' she muttered, 'so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!'

This dismal setting of a wasted life is lightened by the entrance of Estella, the star as her name means, and Pip's life is changed from thenceforth.  Later, in the setting of the city of London, Pip alters his values, feeling it to be degrading to be associated with the country people, such as Joe, whom he has loved as a father and friend.  Ashamed of Joe's provincial speech and manners, and uncomfortable with Joe around Herbert, his roommate, Pip pushes Joe away from himself.  During his stay in London, Pip assumes airs and loses his sense of true values in his efforts to be a gentleman, a perception of one who has money, education, and speaks in a particular way.

After many life-changing experiences that lead him to realize true values, Pip finally returns to his village and the warmth and love of Joe and Biddy who have married.  In this warmth of Joe's cottage, Joe forgives Pip "if I have anythink to forgive!"  Again the setting of the forge provides valuable love and decency for Pip.

In The Scarlet Letter, how does Hester cope with her "situation" as she stands on the scaffold in public humiliation?

Before emerging from the jail to stand on the scaffold with her three-month-old baby, Hester had prepared herself as best she could for the pain and humiliation of the ordeal facing her. Once upon the scaffold, however, she suffers to such an extent that she fears she will go mad:

The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne . . . . under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once.

In order to endure her punishment, Hester's mind takes her away from the scene. She envisions images from her childhood and youth, the home where she lived, the faces of her parents:

[O]ne picture [was] precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.

As one picture leads to another, Hester's reverie continues until she has followed her own footsteps through memory to this time and place and "awakens" to discover herself again on the scaffold:

Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes!—these were her realities,—all else had vanished!

Hester's emotional relief, therefore, is brief, and her agony continues.

In "Greasy Lake," when was it that “it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like taste”?

The exact time of the setting is not established, but the general setting is sometime in the late 1960s. One clue is that Bobby's parked car is a 1957 Chevy, which was an especially popular model for teenagers in the 1960s. Also, the story contains a reference to Khe Sahn, an allusion to an important battle in the Vietnam War in 1968. The 1960s was the decade in which teenage rebellion became more prevalent, less shocking, and even culturally "fashionable" among some, like the narrator and his friends.

In the novel "Slave Dancer," who is the character Ras and what does he do?

In "The Slave Dancer," at the time when Jessie is playing his fife for the slaves on-board The Moonlight, he sees a young black boy about his age staring at him.  Later this boy is the one who finds his fife after Stoddard has thrown the flute into the slave hold and told Jessie to go find it.  The young black boy finds the fife (flute) and hands it across to Jessie so he won't have to walk across the slaves to look for it.  Toward the end of the novel, Jessie and this same young black boy get trapped in the slave hold together during the squall.  They swim to shore together and become rescued by the older run-away slave named Daniel.  It is during this period of time with Daniel that we learn this young black boy's name is RAS.  He and Jessie eventually go their separate ways, but Jessie spends the rest of his life keeping one eye open wishing to once more see this young boy he went through so much with when he was 13.

Hamlet opens with poison and closes with poison. What is the literal and metaphorical use of posion throughout the play?

The literal use is, of course, to kill people. Most importantly, at the beginning, the King, Hamlet's father. Claudius uses poison to murder him and take over the kingdom. Then, Claudius and Laertes use poison for the final death plot. Claudius puts poison in the infamous wine glass, and Laertes puts poison on the tip of his rapier.  Unfortunately for Claudius, his plan didn't go very well; the poison was also his own death-token.

Figuratively and metaphorically, we see how greed poisons and how Hamlet's quest for truth poisoned. Greed poisons Claudius; it prompts him to murder and to plot Hamlet's death while manipulating everyone around him. Everyone he plots with ends up dead, poisoned by his greedy touch: Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Gertrude, Ophelia, Laertes. 

Hamlet is poisoned by his quest for and truth and revenge. He alters his behavior to investigate without restraint and thereby alienates those he cares about. He rejects Ophelia and murders her beloved father. She becomes mad and falls to a drowning death during which Gertrude reports she had no sense of her danger.

He rages against his mother, baffling her and turning her more toward Claudius. He scorns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; he master-minds their murder then returns to Denmark to take revenge against Claudius. Hamlet's quest for revenge was a figurative, metaphorical form of poison that slowly ate away at him and affected many characters in the play, leading to Denmark's disastrous conclusion and Norway's unintended triumph.

What events lead to Napoleon's seizing complete control of the farm, and which different tactics does he use to succeed in Chapter V?

From the beginning of Chapter II, Napoleon begins to assume control of the farm, as he and the other pigs devise and impose a series of seven commandments which dictate the behavior of the other animals.  It is not until Chapter V, however, that Napoleon makes his move to assert complete control over the farm.  He accomplishes this through a series of "diplomatic" moves.

Snowball, Napoleon's only real political adversary on the farm, approaches him with a design for a windmill he would like to see on the farm.  Napoleon believes the construction of the windmill would divert the animals' attention from what is truly important - the production of food.  In the political battle that ensues, Napoleon makes a power play by bringing in nine dogs who are loyal to him and having them remove Snowball from the farm.  The tactic Napoleon uses in this situation is quite straightforward; however, what he does to "smooth things over" with the other animals says much more about his political methods and goes further to show his political savvy.

To justify his removal of Snowball from the farm, Napoleon has Squealer, his "information officer," begin the rumor that Snowball is a criminal, giving the impression that Napoleon's actions were in the service of the "state."  To further this idea, Napoleon agrees to build the windmill on the farm, all the time asserting it was his idea from the beginning.  While these "moves" are intended to demonstrate Napoleon's dedication to the state, they also serve to ensure greater loyalty from the other animals.  Any criticism against Napoleon would, by extension, be a criticism against the state.