Why does the tinker throw away the chrysanthemums?(i.e. What is the significance of that act--for him and for Elisa?) John Steinbeck's "The...

When the tinker arrives on the Allen farm, his main
objective is to be able to repair something so that he can earn money.  After Elisa
tells him that she has nothing in need of repair, he does not leave; instead, he uses
his skills as a salesman and opportunist by cajoling her into talking about her beloved
chrysanthemums.  When he sounds poetic in his description of them--"Looks like a quick
puff of colored smoke"--Elisa's aesthetic nature is awakened and excited.  Of course,
the tinker then takes advantage of this awakening and feigns an interest in the flowers,
saying that he would love to take some to a lady down the road that he
knows.

With shining eyes and an awakened spirit, Elisa
gladly puts some of the chrysanthemums in a pot for the tinker to give to his friend. 
As he drives off after Elisa has given him some work, she feels alive and encouraged
that he will give the flowers to the lady.  However, as she and her husband travel the
road later on their way to supper in town, Elisa spots the discarded chrysanthemums on
the side of the road. 

Elisa feels betrayed at the sight of
the mutilated chrysanthemums. She turns from her husband so that he will not see her
crying "weakly--like an old woman."  Elisa has been humiliated by the sight of the
flower for which she has become so excited in its promise of bloom and life; instead,
her aesthetic passion and connection of spirit with nature has been ridiculed and
sullied.  Towards both men, the tinker and her husband, she is now
frustrated.

This stanza is taken from poem "Afterwards" by Thomas Hardy. I need explanation of following stanza.When the Present has latched its postern behind...

The stanza in question, from Thomas Hardy's poem
"Afterwards", comes from the first stanza of the poem.

The
poem refers to the fact that things are changing in the world. The phrase "the Present
has latched its postern behind" refers to the fact that the present is now the past. It,
having already happened, can no longer be considered the
present.

The line "May month flaps its glad green leaves
like wings" also refers to the fact that May is now over and June has
arrived.

The last line of the stanza refers to the fact
that "he" (the speaker) is the type of man to notice that time was continuous. The man
would notice that May is moving on and that the present does not stay around for
long.

The speaker is reflecting on the fact of how others
perceive him after his death. This is notated by the use of the past
tense.

Basically, this stanza refers to the fact that the
man was cognative that life simply moved on with the change of the world around him.
Much like the delicate silk of the spider which typically goes unnoticed, time simply
passes.

According to Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel what is the defenition of food production?

Food production according to Jared
Diamond is the process of growing food by agriculture or
herding.

People until the last 11 millennia survived by
hunting wild animals and searching for edible plant products in the wild. This was a
very difficult task as food which we can consume is very difficult to obtain in the wild
and does not have enough of the nutrients that we
require.

When people started domesticating wild animals and
plants and ate the livestock and crops which were the result of doing this, they created
sources of food that were easy to obtain nutrients from and had enough of what was
required. This made the shift to food production one of primary reasons for the
development of groups of people around the world. Groups of people living in parts that
adopted this practice earlier were able to dominate those that did not do
so.

Given |a| = 2, |b| = 5, and |a-2b| = 7.5 Determine |a+b|a and b are vectors.

Let a be a vector such
that:

a = ti + uj

==> l
a l = sqrt(t^2 + u^2) = 2

==> t^2 + u^2 =
4...............(1)

b= xi +
yj

==> l b l = sqrt(x^2 + y^2) =
5

==> x^2 + y^2 =
25..............(2)

a- 2b = (ti+uj) - 2(
xi+yj)

a-2b = (t-2x)i +
(u-2y)j

==> l a-2b l = sqrt( t-2x)^2 + (u-2y)^2 =
7.5

==> t^2 - 4tx + 4x^2 + u^2 - 4uy + 4y^2 =
7.5^2

==> t^2 + u^2 + 4x^2 + 4y^2 - 4tx - 4uy =
7.5^2

==> (t^2 + u^2) + 4 (x^2 + y^2) - 4(tx+uy) =
7.5^2

==> 4 + 4*25 - 4 (tx + uy) =
7.5^2

==> 104  - 4(tx+uy)=
7.5^2

==> -4(tx+uy) =
-47.75

==> (tx+uy) =
11.9375............(3)

a+ b= ti + uj +
xi+yj

        = (t+x)i +
(u+y)j

==, l a+ b l = sqrt(t+x)^2 +
(u+y)^2

==> l a+bl = sqrt( t^2 + 2tx + x^2 + u^2 +
2uy + y^2)

==> l a+bl = sqrt( t^2+u^2 + u^2 + y^2 +
2tx+2uy)

==. l a+bl = sqrt( 4 + 25 +
2(tx+uy)

==> la+bl = sqrt( 29 +
2*11.9375)

==< la+bl =
sqrt(52.875)

==> l a+ bl =
7.272

What is the exposition in "The Most Dangerous Game"?

Exposition is a rhetorical
device used to provide background information about events and characters. In "The Most
Dangerous Game," author Richard Connell develops the exposition in the opening
paragraphs. We are told that Sanger Rainsford is a famous big game hunter and that he is
sailing to South America to hunt jaguars along the Amazon River. We discover that he has
little regard for the animals he kills, and that he believes they have no understanding
and feel no fear. A great deal of exposition centers around General Zaroff, primarily
during his talks with Rainsford at dinner. He tells Rainsford about his past life in
Russia, his military service, and his great love of hunting. We later find that Zaroff
has grown bored with hunting wild animals, and that this boredom has led him to hunt a
new, more dangerous game: human beings. Zaroff tells Rainsford about the men that he has
deliberately shipwrecked in order to use them as human prey. During his hunt of
Rainsford, we learn some of the tricks that Rainsford has learned during his career, and
he eventually uses them with some success.

How might Ben Jonson's "Epitaph on S. P., a Child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel" compare with Robert Herrick's "Upon Prue, His Maid"?What are the...

Ben Jonson’s poem “Epitaph on S. P., a Child of Queen
Elizabeth’s Chapel” and Robert Herrick’s poem “Upon Prue, His Maid” are two works, by
seventeenth-century writers, that commemorate the dead. However, the differences between
the two works are more striking than their
similarities.

Herrick’s poem is very brief and, partly for
that reason, somewhat witty. Consisting of a mere four lines, the poem does mention the
full name of the person commemorated, Prudence Baldwin, but it gives us almost no
impression of her as an individual person or personality. The language is as simple and
plain as the poem is brief. Just as the urn in which Prue is buried is “little,” so the
same thing is true of the poem in which Herrick commemorates her. Indeed, the word “urn”
here may even refer, metaphorically, to the poem itself (1). One gets the sense that the
poem did not require much time or effort to write – not because Herrick did not value
Prue but simply because epitaphs were often short. (Many of them, in fact, were
inscribed on cemetery headstones and thus could not be very
long.)

In contrast, Jonson gives great attention to “S. P.”
(Salomon Pavy), a boy actor who had acted in several of Jonson’s dramas and whom Jonson
seems to have genuinely respected. Jonson in fact begins by referring to his own grief
at Pavy’s passing, and he also directly and explicitly addresses the reader, as Herrick
does not (1). The first four lines of the poem suggest that Pavy’s death is, and should
be, an occasion of grief for practically everyone, including even a personified Death.
Jonson presents a far more detailed picture of Pavy’s personality and individual
character than Herrick presents of Prue’s. We learn about Pavy’s precise age (9), the
length of his career as an actor (11-12), the kinds of roles he played (14), and his
skill as an actor (16).

Jonson pays unusual tribute to a
non-aristocratic youth, just as he plays unusual tribute to a member of a profession –
acting – that was not especially respected by many people during his era. One senses in
Jonson’s poem the kind of personal loss and genuine tenderness that a poem like
Herrick’s was never intended to express.  Herrick’s poem, though accomplished, is merely
conventional; Jonson’s poem gives us a sense not only of Pavy’s character but also of
the writer’s own personality and values. The mere existence and length of Jonson’s poem
implies the rich value of Pavy’s life. The poem speaks, by implication, as attractively
about Jonson as it does explicitly about Pavy. The fact that Jonson took the time and
made the effort to celebrate Pavy in this way helps refute the claim (associated with
the historian Lawrence Stone) that the deaths of children was not felt as keenly in the
early modern period as they would be in later centuries.

By
the end of the work, Jonson manages to convince us that there is real emotion behind the
poem’s opening lines:

readability="9">

Weep with me, all you that
read

This little story;

And
know for whom a tear you shed,

Death’s self is
sorry.

Jonson’s poem, unlike
Herrick’s, does indeed help us “know” (emphasis added) the specific
person whose death the poem laments.

At the beginning of "The Most Dangerous Game," did Rainsford have any feeling for the animals he hunted, and how did his experience change his...

It is clear from his discussion with Whitney at the
beginning of "The Most Dangerous Game" that Rainsford has no sympathy for the animals he
kills. Both of the men agree that hunting is "the best sport in the world." But Whitney
is quick to add,

readability="8.4972067039106">

     "For the
hunter...  "Not for the jaguar."
     "Don't talk rot,
Whitney," said Rainsford. "You're a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a
jaguar feels?"

Rainsford
claims that animals have "no understanding." But Whitney
disagrees.

readability="11.411764705882">

     "Even so, I
rather think they understand one thing--fear. The fear of pain and the fear of
death."
     "Nonsense," laughed Rainsford. "This hot
weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two
classes--the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are
hunters."

But after Rainsford
becomes the prey himself while being hunted by General Zaroff, he discovers a fear that
only the hunted can feel. He repeatedly reminds himself to keep his nerve. He becomes
tired and "leg-weary." When Zaroff allows Rainsford to escape for another day's hunt,
recognized that

readability="6">

The general was playing with him! The general was
saving him for another day's sport! The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it
was that Rainsford knew the full meaning of
terror.