In the story "The Necklace," what is the atmosphere or tone?

Guy de Maupassant creates the atmosphere or tone of ironic pessimism in his short story “The Necklace.”

Through the third person omniscient narrator, the reader is introduced to the proud, young woman, Mathilde, who feels she deserves better than her past circumstances.

She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans.

Although she came from humble beginnings, she longs for the finer things in life so much so that she allows her inability to tell the truth to destroy her youth and much of her married life. The narrator describes how Madame Loisel “suffered” dearly through her want for the finer things in life.  

Throughout the story, the tone remains the same as Madame Loisel complains about all aspects of her life. Even when her husband secures a ticket to a coveted event, she protests that she has nothing to wear, which quickly dampens her husband’s spirits. He attempts to remain optimistic and suggests she seek proper jewelry from her friend, which ultimately leads to a life of hardship. Mathilde loses the necklace after attending the event but instead of telling her friend the truth, she and her husband go into great debt to replace the necklace.

Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of abject poverty. From the very first she played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off. She would pay it. The servant was dismissed. They changed their flat; they took a garret under the roof.

The author uses words such as "agonizing," "black misery," "physical privation," and "moral torture" to emphasize the pessimism surrounding their existence in the story.

He mortgaged the whole remaining years of his existence, risked his signature without even knowing if he could honour it, and, appalled at the agonising face of the future, at the black misery about to fall upon him, at the prospect of every possible physical privation and moral torture, he went to get the new necklace and put down upon the jeweller's counter thirty-six thousand francs.

Unbeknownst to them, the necklace was an imitation, which was revealed when Mathilde met her friend many years later. By then, she and her husband moved into a drab apartment, and Mathilde lost her looks and ambition from years of hard work to pay for the necklace. She was a bitter, pessimistic woman from her years of drudgery.

The story opens with the narrator telling the reader Mathilde was a girl of good looks and ends with her friend not recognizing her because those looks were gone. This along with the necklace being an imitation create the irony while the plot of the story creates the pessimism.

What are three examples of wordplay in The Handmaid's Tale?

At one point, Offred says, "I compose myself.  My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech.  What I must present is a made thing, not something born."  Here, she plays with the word compose.  When we say that someone composes a speech, we mean that the person writes and prepares it.  When we say that someone composes herself, we mean that she collects her thoughts and feelings and presents an image that seems put together, so to speak.  Offred seems to mean that she composes herself in both senses of the word: she attempts to collect and prepare all the fragments of her person under the Gileadean regime so that she can present herself as something that seems practiced and natural and polished, not awkward and strange.

Another time, when the Commander hands her a pen during one of their clandestine meetings, Offred recalls a memory from the Red Center.  She says, "The pen between my fingers is sensuous, alive almost, I can feel its power, the power of the words it contains.  Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects."  Penis envy is the Freudian idea that women are naturally envious of men's penises because the penis is the source of power.  Here, Offred plays with the letters, breaking them up differently to say "Pen Is Envy" because the ability to read and write has become an incredible source of power for the Commanders of Gilead.  She envies her Commander his right to the pen, something that she lacks.

When Offred describes Moira's escape from the Red Center, she says, "Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose.  She was now a loose woman."  Loose has several potential meanings here: Moira has been released or set free, but her pieces also seem to have come loose as though she's in danger of losing some now that she's no longer confined and defined by her societal role.  Further, to be a "loose woman" is a sort of old-fashioned way to describe a sexually promiscuous woman.  Taken together, Moira is both dangerous and endangered, which is just how the leaders of Gilead would want the other handmaids-in-training to think of her.

What is the importance of humor and of laughter in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

In Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, laughter shows that the men on the psych ward are growing towards health and independence. When Nurse Ratched is in control of the ward, the men rarely laugh. However, when McMurphy arrives, he tries to make the men laugh and demonstrate increasing independence from the nurse. As Chief says:

"I think McMurphy knew better than we did that our tough looks were all show, because he still wasn’t able to get a real laugh out of anybody. Maybe he couldn’t understand why we weren’t able to laugh yet, but he knew you can’t really be strong until you can see a funny side to things" (page 203).

In other words, McMurphy tries to build the men up to the point where they can laugh, an act of independence that shows they don't believe everything the nurse and their doctors say. At the beginning of the book, the men aren't able to laugh at all because they are under the control of the nurse and their doctors.

As the book goes on, many of the men grow healthier and are able to laugh. For example, when they go on the boat trip, they laugh together. As Chief says,

"I could...see McMurphy surrounded by his dozen people, and watch them, us, swinging a laughter that rang out on the water in ever-widening circles, farther and farther, until it crashed up on beaches all over the coast, on beaches all over all coasts, in wave after wave after wave" (page 212).

Chief describes laughter almost as a force that shows the men's will to assert their independence and find happiness. The men are able to do so in spite of the nurse, who pins warnings about bad weather on the bulletin board before their trip. Therefore, laughter is a sign of the growing health of most of the men, including Chief, and their movement away from the nurse's unhealthy and paralyzing control. 

What is the interpretation of the poem "Sanctuary"?

I wouldn't say that there is any one particular valid interpretation of "Sanctuary" by Jean Valentine. Her poem has inspired many different interpretations. Some readers find it inspiring, some find it depressing. Some think it's deeply profound, while others have called it "McPoetry"!

Let's start by trying to figure out what's going on in the poem.

It opens with an epigraph (a short quotation from something else) that talks about how real interpersonal communication can be so meaningful and intimate that it's like the act of praying.

Then the poem itself begins. Because the whole thing has a dreamlike, disjointed quality, we don't really see any straightforward, clearly meaningful sentences, just fragments, short questions, ellipses (the three dots, like this: ...) and unexpected spaces. Two strangers are talking in a room. We're not told what the room is or where it is, but some readers see it as a prison cell, since Valentine herself volunteered in prisons. Anyway, the people ask each other questions, and they talk about solitude, death, dread, fear, communication and connection with others, and the afterlife. The poem concludes with these lines:

Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to

follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes.

With those lines, the speaker seems to be acknowledging how the poem itself is fully open to interpretation: that we have to find a "thread" of meaning in it and use that to anchor the poem to something valid in real life, which can seem "impossible."

So, what does the poem mean?

Again, it's extremely open to the individual reader's interpretation. Personally, I read the poem as a conversation between two people who are desperate to hear each other and to be understood, but they struggle toward these goals without actually reaching them.

I interpret the title "Sanctuary" to mean not necessarily a holy religious place, but a room (or the figurative room) in which we allow ourselves to know someone else so well that it's like we've stepped outside of our "own skin" to see through "other eyes."

The poem's insistence on the lines "not scatter the voices," "not having listened," and "not having asked" seem to indicate that the thing we should fear most is a failure to have truly communicated with others: to have disregarded what they've said, or to not have listened to what they've said, or to have failed to ask the important questions that could have helped us understand other people.

Valentine's overall message in the poem, as I see it, is that the act of communicating with others is so important that it's holy and we should treat it with reverence, even if we fail to do it well.

Unaware of his presence, what does Juliet ask Romeo to say in Act II, Scene 2?

In Act I, Scene 5 Romeo and Juliet meet and fall instantly in love at Capulet's party. Unfortunately, as the party is coming to an end their identities are revealed. Juliet says, "My only love sprung from my only hate!" After the party Romeo is not satisfied and looks to find Juliet again. He goes over the orchard wall of the Capulet estate and is standing under the balcony when Juliet comes outside. Unaware of his presence below, Juliet begins to speak out loud. At first she only sighs, but soon speaks Romeo's name and then asks him to give up his family and his name:

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

She also claims that if he will not give up his family she swears to give up hers. This conflict between the fact that she is a Capulet and he is a Montague can never be resolved and will lead to the suicides of the two young lovers at the end of the play.

How did Manifest Destiny affect individuals?

Manifest Destiny affected people in the United States. The goal of Manifest Destiny was to spread our control from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

Many people saw Manifest Destiny as an opportunity. People moved to the new lands we received in order to farm, to raise cattle, or to mine for minerals. Other people viewed these new areas as an opportunity for adventure. They could go to new places to discover what was there. As people moved west, business owners saw this as an opportunity to expand. This would give them a chance to make more money.

Other individuals were affected negatively because of the policy of Manifest Destiny. The Native Americans had their lands taken away when they were placed on reservations. They also got diseases as white people moved to the West. Some Native Americans died from these diseases. Some of the original settlers in the western regions also suffered a similar fate from these diseases that the Americans brought with them as they expanded westward.

Manifest Destiny affected individuals in various ways.

Why is Malaysian freedom of speech restricted?

The Malaysian constitution provides for a degree of freedom of the press. As with all other countries, this freedom is not entirely unlimited. In the last several years there has been significant conflict and controversy over government actions that have resulted in charges and incarcerations of Malaysian journalists and political opponents.

Many of these conflicts have revolved around the government's application of the 1948 Sedition Act. This act makes criminal any sort of behavior that might cause someone to feel “hatred” or “contempt” for the Malaysian government or constitution.

Some of the controversy around the Sedition Act comes from the fact that Prime Minister Najib Razak had pledged earlier to back a repeal effort of the act. Since reneging on his promise, Malaysia has seen a number of its journalists and members of opposition political parties tried and jailed under the terms of the Sedition Act.