Why does the author make reference to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon in "The Gift of the Magi"?

The famous visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon in Israel is recorded in the Old Testament in 1 Kings 10. Both the Queen and Solomon were exceedingly rich. The Queen is strongly impressed by King Solomon's wisdom, power, and wealth. When she is ready to depart she gives him presents of great value.

And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon.

O. Henry is using the wildest exaggeration when he compares Della and Jim Young to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. He is suggesting that these famous biblical figures who were so wealthy would envy Della's treasure of her beautiful long hair and Jim's treasure of his gold watch. O. Henry here is probably introducing a biblical motif because he intends to end his story with another reference to the Bible, the story of the three Magi who brought valuable gifts to the infant Jesus in the New Testament. 

"The Gift of the Magi" is obviously a Christmas story intended for a Christmas issue of the newspaper. O. Henry was a notoriously heavy drinker who consumed two quarts of whiskey a day and wrote many of his stories in New York saloons. It seems likely that when he was writing this story that he was both uninhibited in his choice of words and under deadline pressure to get something on paper. The hyperbole regarding the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon is just one indication that O. Henry was giving free rein to his great imagination as well filling up space to meet a certain word-quota.

Further evidence that O. Henry was writing under deadline pressure is found in the fact that he repeats the following information four times:

ONE DOLLAR AND eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. 

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. 

Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim.

This certainly sounds like a writer who is filling up space to meet a quota and being careless. O. Henry probably did not proofread his manuscript after he had finished it but hurried to the newspaper office to hand his copy to the printer. Nevertheless, as Hamlet tells Horatio:

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well...

O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" became his best-loved and more frequently anthologized story.  

What is the place of an author in intellectual history?

One very powerful purpose of literature is the author’s ability to solidify abstract ideas and philosophies. A ready example is the philosophy of Existentialism. While Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness explained existentialism quite thoroughly, it was the novels of Albert Camus (The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, etc.) that made it understandable to the reader layman. While “intellectual history” ranges over many years, the introduction of new ways of looking at the world can usually be narrowed down to the literary output of one or two authors – Ayn Rand and the moral justification of Free Enterprise, Erica Jong and sexual freedom, Jack Kerouac and post-modernism, etc. So the place of an author (fiction) in intellectual history is to bridge the gap between abstract idea and practical expression to the reading public in fictive and narratological form.

What was achieved in SEATO? What tensions arose between the USSR and the US because of this?

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was created in 1954. Member nations included the United States, Great Britain, France, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Thailand, and Pakistan. The goal of the organization was to prevent the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. It is interesting to note that most nations in Southeast Asia didn’t join this organization.

The creation of this organization is another example of the tensions that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union as part of the Cold War. We were trying to stop the spread of communism while the Soviet Union was trying to spread it. One of the activities of this organization was to make the economies of this region strong. We believed a strong economy was an effective deterrent in stopping the spread of communism. We also used the charter of SEATO as the legal basis for our involvement in Vietnam. Our involvement in the Vietnam War heightened tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States.

SEATO was different from NATO in that SEATO didn’t have a way to authorize military action if needed. There was nothing in its charter that allowed member nations to create a military force to take action if needed. There also was no organized intelligence-gathering system within SEATO.

For various reasons, member nations left the organization in the 1970s. When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, there was no longer a reason for this organization to exist. By 1977, SEATO no longer existed as an organization.

How did the ideas of enlightenment thinkers lead to democratic thought and institutions?

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood," wrote John Maynard Keynes in 1936. "Indeed the world is ruled by little else."

Enlightenment philosophy and economic theory had a particularly direct influence on the establishment of democratic government, because several of the Founding Fathers of the United States were quite well-versed in what was at that time absolutely state-of-the-art thought. It is not simply coincidence that the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations were published the same year; Thomas Jefferson had very likely read some of Smith's earlier work by the time he was writing the Declaration. The Founding Fathers were also heavily influenced by John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and you can see some of this influence even in the wording; Locke's "life, liberty, and property" led directly to Jefferson's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

While it is wrong to lionize the Founding Fathers and treat them as if they were infallible (they assuredly had many flaws, not least their use and endorsement of slavery), there really is something quite remarkable about the founding of the United States, different from almost every other nation that came before. Most countries came about either organically over centuries of people sort of living together and eventually thinking of themselves as the same, or suddenly and violently by the conquering of one group of people by another. The US separated from Britain violently to be sure; but once it had, the nation that was constructed was not made simply to advance the interests of the leaders of the revolution (as most revolutionary governments are, even today). Instead, they literally sat down together and asked the question: "What would be the greatest kind of government?" They argued and debated over this question for years, drawing from the work of the best philosophers and economists in the world to determine the answer. When they had finally reached some sort of consensus as to what the greatest kind of government would be, they made that government. They consciously set out to make the best nation they could, and applied the best knowledge available in order to do so.

This was a turning point in human history. Monarchy, oligarchy and depotism had been essentially the only major forms of government (even what they called "democracy" in ancient times was really aristocracy), but from that point forward began to be replaced by more and more pluralistic and democratic governments. The process is far from complete, of course; but it all started at that moment near the end of the 18th century, and we owe much of its success to the brilliance of Enlightenment thinkers.

What is the structure of James Joyce's "Eveline"?

James Joyce's short story "Eveline" is a simple but powerful story with a fairly straightforward structure. Basically, the story can be broken up into two basic sections: a lengthy portion of exposition and background information, and then a much shorter section at the end composed of climactic action.

The first section takes up most of the story, and takes place not only in Eveline's home, but also within her own head. The main section of the story is made up of Eveline's thoughts and memories of her past, and it's here that we learn about Eveline's miserable predicament. Eveline begins by meditating on the constant presence of change, and then moves on to think about the state of her family. This section is perhaps the most important, as it discusses Eveline's dead brother and mother, her abusive father, and the miserably back breaking nature of her daily life. Finally, Eveline considers her relationship with Frank, memories of her mother, and, finally, her need to escape home. The fact that most of the story is contained within Eveline's thoughts illustrates just how isolated she really is.  

The second portion of the book is where most of the immediate action takes place. In it, Eveline experiences sudden, unexplained panic about her impending trip to Buenos Aires with Frank, and chooses to remain in Ireland. Much shorter than the first section, the second section of the short story packs in a surprisingly abundant amount of drama. As such, the story takes on a very interesting structure: after extensive build-up and exposition, Joyce hammers the reader with condensed and muscular action. Overall, this structure gives the reader a sense of confusion similar to Eveline's, as it hard to understand the motives that drive this desperate young woman to remain in such a miserable life. 

Which topics could I discuss from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House?

In A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, there are many themes that could be written about, and those themes are wrapped up in the larger topics which they explain. Although the words topic and theme are sometimes used interchangeably, they can indicate differing degrees of meaning within any subject.

The play highlights various issues that could be present in any household, issues which revolve around a lack of meaningful conversation, and therefore stem from poor communication. Nora does not get the response she expects from Torvald when he discovers her secret. A loving and loyal husband would rally to her support, and so she feels betrayed and recognizes Torvald's hypocritical behavior. The fact that there is no depth to her marriage is suddenly so apparent to her that she takes drastic steps. Her now-developing self-awareness and her realization that she allowed herself to be managed, first by her father and, immediately thereafter, her husband, forces Nora to face the reality of her situation. She feels like she is nothing more than a "doll-wife." She is never involved in any serious decision-making. She can no longer behave like a "little squirrel... a featherhead... or a spendthrift...," and she is ready to take control for the first time in her life. The theme could be betrayal within the topic of marriage.

This is an ideal area to focus on in this play as the story hinges on the dysfunctional relationship between Nora and Torvald and their mutual dependency on it, Torvald to make him feel like he is providing for and protecting his family, and Nora to promote her husband's value and remain dutiful.

If considering themes and topics separately, other possible themes include sexism and women's rights within the topic of society's views and possible discriminatory practices. There is also the theme of self-discovery within the broader topic of identity.

How does the theme of inhumanity take place within the story of Animal Farm? What specific actions of the animals make them inhumane?

The basic inhumanity of the animals in Animal Farm is that the pigs perpetrate the same unfairness that caused them to overthrow Mr. Jones in the first place. For example, although the pigs declare that everyone is equal, they quickly establish their dominance early on and deprive the other animals of a fair share of the farm's resources. While the pigs claim most of the resources, the other animals do the hard work. This system of exploitation is very similar to what the humans practiced on the farm, but it has not improved under the pigs' leadership.

When the animals complain, the pigs use fear and the animals' common hatred of the past to excuse their inhumanity. As Squealer tells the animals:

"Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers...Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back!" (page 14).

The pigs' inhumanity is that they perpetrate the evils of the past by knowingly manipulating the other animals through fear. 

One of the most potent examples of the way in which the pigs are inhumane is their treatment of Boxer, an unfailingly hard-working horse who gives endless hours of work to improve the farm. After he can no longer work, he is carted off by a glue maker and never seen again. Boxer, despite trying, cannot read, so he doesn't understand his fate (as he can't read the side of the truck). His illiteracy makes him easier to manipulate and, despite his loyalty, he is sent off the "knacker's" (page 47). This fate is what the pigs had warned Mr. Jones might have in store for Boxer, but they wind up instituting Mr. Jones's harsh system of treatment while pretending that they are helping the animals live a better life. They also take advantage of other animals' weaknesses, such as manipulating Boxer because he can't learn to read.