Does Tom Walker agree to the devil's pact in order to receive the money?Washington Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker"

When Tom Walker first encounters "Old Scratch" as he is
commonly called, they have a long conversation, but even though the devil offers to
place wealth within Tom's power, Tom refuses the conditions
because

He was
determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused, out of the mere spirit
of contradiction.

Tom
determines not to please his "termagant wife"; so, the more she talks, the more he
becomes resolute not to "be damned to please her." Angered by her husband, Tom's wife
decides to drive the bargain with the devil herself, and sets out with the silver teapot
and spoons in her apron.  However, when she does not return, Tom ventures out to learn
the fate of his wife.  What he finds is her apron in a tree with a vulture hovering over
it; inside the apron are her liver and heart.

Finally, Tom
encouters the black man in the woods one evening and they haggle over the terms of the
"pirate's treasure."  In addition to asking for Tom's soul, Old Scratch demands that Tom
become a slave trader, but Tom refuses because this is even below his moral code.  Then,
the devil suggests that Tom become a usurer, a position that appeals to Tom's "tastes." 
Thus, they shake hands and strike their bargain, and Tom makes a fortune in the great
speculating fever which soon breaks out in the country.  Tom soon becomes a rich and
powerful man.  Of course, as he ages, Tom has a "lurking dread that the Devil, after
all, would have his due."  And, he does.

Determine the quadratic function y=x^2-mx+8 if f(3)=4.

Given f(x)= x^2 - mx + 8

We
need to find the value of m such that f(3) = 3

We will
substitute with x= 3

==> f(3)= 3^2 - 3*m + 8 =
4

==> 9 - 3m + 8 = 4

We
will combine like terms.

==> -3m = 4 -8
-9

==> -3m = -13

Now we
will divide by -3

==> m = -13/-3 =
13/3

Then the value of m is
13/3

Then the quadratic function is :

f(x)= x^2 - 13 x /3+ 
8

Explain how the choices the characters, like Sarty, his father, Major Despain, the judge, make affect others in "Barn Burning."William Faulkner's...

This is an interesting angle to take on this excellent
story about hate and anger and the individual freedom to defy expectations. Certainly,
we are presented with many characters whose fate is dependent upon the choices and
actions of others. Perhaps most obviously we can start with Sarty's father, whose anger
and choice to continually express that anger in acts of arson has devastating
consequences on his family, who are reduced to the position of mendicants as they have
to continually wonder around from place to place and are scorned and repulsed by
others.

If we examine Abner Snopes, we can see that it is
his continued anger against the world, and especially against those who have power over
him, that directly leads to Sarty following his own conscience and defying his father's
will by telling Major De Spain what his father is doing. This of course results in
Sarty's effective isolation as he knows he can never return to his family, and the end
of this excellent story features his walk away from what has happened and his family and
in to an uncertain future, but one at least where he will be free from the influence of
his father's poor choices:

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He went on down the hill, toward the dark woods
within which the liquid silver voices of teh birds called unceasing--the rapid and urgen
beating of the urgent and quiring heart of the late spring night. He did not look
back.

Please review "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog" by O.Henry.

With his own inimitable wry humor, O. Henry writes a
characteristically delightful story with a surprise ending in "Memoirs of a Yellow
Dog." The dog himself is the narrator and it is from his perspective that the reader
perceives the main characters, a fat lady and her hen-pecked husband.  Subjected to
kisses and ridiculous baby-talk--"oh, oo's un oodlum, doodlu, woodlum, toodlu,
bitsy-witsy skoodlums"--the dog who is called Lovey is disgusted by how the husband
works while his wife eats and gossips away the day.  When the man comes home, it is he
who must walk the dog.

One day, the yellow dog "touches
noses" with a black-and-tan terrier who lives across the hall and learns that the reason
his owner returns happy from the daily walk is the fact that the man stops into saloons
on the way, becoming "spifflicated."  With this information under his collar, the yellow
dog pulls up by a saloon the next evening, refuses to go farther, and the man decides to
enter and have some "Hot Scotches."  Once outside, the man, whose perspective has been
illuminated by drink, decides to release the dog from his confinement, "Good doggie, go
away..."  However, the yellow dog refuses to run off in his effort to convince the man
that it is he who needs freedom.  The man seems to understand; then, he heads to the
Twenty-third Street ferry where he tells the operator of the
ferry,

Me and
my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky
Mountains.

When the man tells
Lovey that he is changing his name to "Pete," the yellow dog howls with delight at the
liberation of both the man and of himself.  Ironically, it took the intuitive powers of
a canine to make the man realize his own servitude. This is accomplished by means of O.
Henry's "breezy and slangy" style and his typical mixture of sentiment and
humor.

Compare the main characters' attititudes toward money in A Doll's House.

In the play A Doll's House, by Henrik
Ibsen, we find as main characters the married couple made of Nora and Torvald. We know
that Nora is less of a wife and more like Torvald's play thing. Meanwhile Torvald takes
seriously his role as a head of household and provider to the family.These different
roles make it hard for Nora and Torvald to agree in anything remotely connected with
money.

Nora is a true spendthrift. However, the reason why
she spends so much money is that, for the first time, she feels free from the
constraints that she once went through trying to get money to take care of Torvald
during his illness. She also suffers consistently because the man who loaned her the
money to take care of Torvald, Krogstad, is now blackmailing her. Hence, Nora's
desperation for money has always been so that she can pay off Krogstad and be left
alone.

Now that Torvald will be promoted at his job, Nora
feels that she will be financially free to enjoy her life. This is not Torvald's view,
however, because he is more conscious about finances, and always plays it safe. Yet, it
is also arguable that Nora simply knows that Torvald will weaken down and give her
everything and anything she wants because that is precisely her job: To entertain him
with her little spoiled girl antics.

Therefore, money is a
unifying element in the marriage of Nora and Torvald, but it will also serve as the
reason behind their separation.

Choose one of the Lady Macbeth's soliloquies in Shakespeare's Macbeth and analyze it.Macbeth by William Shakespeare

In Shakespeare' Macbeth, Lady Macbeth
also delivers a soliloquy that allows us to look deep into the heart of the woman who
drives Macbeth to murder Duncan—his King, his friend, his cousin,
and his houseguest (a terrible act in those
days).

Lady Macbeth notes the presence of a raven, a bird
associated with death, as it "croaks" Duncan's approach, which Lady Macbeth has already
decided will be his last entrance, to her castle. Here she calls on the dark spirits to
change her so that she may be as hard and vicious as necessary to do what must be done
to kill the King. She wants to no longer have the characteristics of a woman ("unsex me
here") and make her capable of great cruelty, something that does not (according to
Shakespeare) come naturally to a woman (the "gentler" sex). She asks that her blood be
thickened, and the passage to conscience and remorse within her be blocked so she feels
no guilt, so nothing stands between her and what she intends to
do.

The raven
himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
(40)

Under my battlements. Come, you
spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me
here

And fill me, from the crown to the toe,
top-full

Of direst cruelty! Make thick my
blood,

Stop up the access and passage to
remorse,(45)

That no compunctious visitings of
nature

Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace
between

The effect and
it!

She then asks the spirits
of darkness ("murdering ministers") that lend strength to "human mischief" to make her
mother's milk, something associated with love and nurturing of a child, be made
poisonous ("gall").

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Come to my woman's
breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering
ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances
(50)

You wait on nature's
mischief!

Next, Lady Macbeth
addresses the cover of night, asking it to bring the dark mists of hell around her so
that (personifying her weapon) her knife does not "see" the wound it intends to make in
the good, "God-chosen" King; to make it dark enough that even heaven cannot see what she
intends to do to and (personification again) "cry out" that she
"Stop!"

Come,
thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of
hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it
makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the
dark

To cry, “Hold,
hold!”(55)

At this point
Macbeth enters, and Lady Macbeth repeats the predictions listed in his letter to her;
she speaks of her joy. She will now begin to poison his mind so
that he will not balk at what must be done, not only so he can be
King, but that she can become Queen.

How does John mature throughout The Pigman?

There is a definite difference between the John at the
start of the book and the John at the end. Note how the first chapter gives us an
accurate idea of John's character through the way that he sets himself up against the
establishment of school. He sets off firecrackers in his school and organises other
students to roll rotten apples towards substitute teachers. He drinks and smokes, and
definitely is presented as an anti-establishment figure. As the novel progresses, we see
that this is largely in response to his relationship with his parents. John deliberately
tries to inject fun and rebellion into his own character in response to the way that his
parents lead such a conventional and boring existence. This explains his happy-go-lucky
nature and the way that he throws a party in Mr. Pignati's house. It is often he that
has to drag the reluctant Lorraine with him along on their plans to cause
mischief.

However, at the end of the novel, after the
disaster of the party and the way that he recognises he was at fault, it is clear that
John has learnt a massive lesson. Note what he says towards the end of the final
chapter:

There
was no one else to blame anymore. No Bores or Old Ladies or Nortons, or Assassins
waiting at the bridge. And there was no place to hide--no place across any river for a
boatman to take us.

John is
forced to recognise that, with Mr. Pignati's death, there was something in him and
Lorraine that died as well, and that now, they had to face the consequences of their
actions. John realises that he cannot "blame" anybody else for his life, and that his
life would be "what we made of it--nothing more, nothing less." The symbol of the
monkeys is one that is tremendously important, as the last sentence of the novel
indicates:

readability="8">

They build their own cages, we could almost hear
the Pigman whisper, as he took his children with
him.

John learns that he must
not "build his own cage" of irresponsibility. He has to accept responsibility for his
own life and the decisions and mistakes that he made just as he has recognised that he
was wrong to throw the party. He has moved from being a carefree, rebellious youth to a
position of maturity.