From which act in "The Tempest" does the quote below come, and what are the circumstances in which it is spoken?But this rough magic I here abjure;...

It is from Act Five, Scene One of The Tempest and occurs when Prospero, a magician, decides to abandon his magic potions and his communion with magic powers and return to a common humanity. Often identified with Shakespeare at career’s end, an old man with flowing robes and beard, bidding adieu to his books and magic and to “ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves” (5.1.33), with a fifteen-year-old daughter Prospero could be anywhere between thirty and ninety. The Tempest portrays Prospero’s brush with revenge, and can be viewed as an expression of an old man’s indignation, pique and superior power but he learns an important lesson which includes qualities of forgiveness, peace, and humanity.

Prospero is saying goodbye to a life time of magic that, while impressive to others, meant nothing to him while trapped on an Island after being banished and disgraced.

This was Shakespeare's last play and as such, his farewell to the magic of the theatre and the wonder of words. When Prospero says this line, we can imagine Shakespeare speaking through him.

In the book Bless Me, Ultima, what is a good quote to Antonio from his father about being a priest?

Tony's father is none too excited about his youngest son becoming a priest.  He would be much happier if Tony would follow in his footsteps, and that of his brothers, and adopt the roaming, nomadic lifestyle of the Marez clan.  Tony's mother and father argue about his future early on in the story, when Tony has been shaken by witnessing Lupito's death:

"Be sensible!" my father stood up.  "The boy has not even been through his Catechism.  And it is not the priest who will decide when the time comes, but Tony himself!"  He stalked past me.  The smell of gunpowder was still on his clothes.

They say the Devil smells of sulfur.

Tony is still a young boy at this stage of the story, with much to learn, and is as confused as anyone is at that age.  It is this sort of raw template that is Antonio that Ultima has to work with.

What does the narrator mean when said,"Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town"?

Emily's family was entrenched in a socially prominent position. Emily was awarded special privileges based upon her father's achievements, not her own. While she was not loved, or cherished, it was accepted in the town that she was special. She was an obligation that the town had no choice to defer to, protect, and revere. Because it was done since the time of herfather, it was natural to continue the special treatment. 

Describe the events that lead up to the death of Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Bob Ewell is angry at Atticus for making him look like a fool in front of all of Maycomb (see Ch. 24). First he spits in Atticus's face. Then he warns him that one person is down (Tom Robinson) but there are still about two more to go. This likely suggests Atticus and the Judge Taylor.

Next Bob is fired from the WPA - one of the only jobs he has ever had. Then Judge Taylor is home alone reading in his parlor one night when sees a shadow. He notices that someone has entered his house and finished reading with a shotgun in his lap. This was obviously Bob.

Then Bob is warned harshly be Link Deas to stop stocking Helen, Tom's widow.

These factors lead up to attack on Jem and Scout Halloween night. He was drunk and leaped on the kids from the trees. Boo sees this and rushes to their aid, killing Bob in the process.

When Atticus is told, he automatically assumes Jem killed Bob in the scuffle. However, Heck Tate covers up the real murderer, Boo. He says that Bob simply fell on his own knife. Here is where you have to make some inferences. Bob is dead with a kitchen knife sticking in him. But was the Bob's weapon?

Notice that Tate tells Atticus - when reenacting the murder - that he took the switch blade knife from a drunk man earlier (he is not lying - Bob was drunk and going after the kids with that very knife); however, if you read closely, you can infer that Boo killed him and that Tate is trying to cover things up to protect him.

What is the plot of "Out, Out" by Robert Frost?

In Frost's "OUT, OUT--" only one person is sawing wood:  the boy who ends up dying.  He is relatively alone and relatively unsupervised.  When the speaker writes:

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other

Under the sunset far into Vermont....

he is establishing setting, not suggesting that there is a crowd in the yard, just as he is establishing setting when he describes the smell of the wood in the previous line:

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

The speaker doesn't write that people do lift their eyes and see the mountains, he just says that if people do, they see the mountains.  And if there are other people present, which there may be, they certainly aren't sawing wood:  there's only one saw, since the word is used in the singular.

Thus, the boy is sawing wood at least relatively unsupervised, and after he dies, the family:

...since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

The speaker uses understatement to describe the situation and the family's reaction, so the fact that the boy is sawing wood relatively alone is vital to the understanding of the poem.

The major points in the plot follow:

1. The boy is sawing wood, uneventfully.


2. The speaker wishes someone would have told the boy to stop early.


3. His sister yells to him that it's time for supper, and at that moment the saw deeply cuts the boy's hand.


4. The boy realizes the danger, being a "big boy/Doing a man's work," although he underestimates it.  He worries only that the doctor will have to cut off the hand.


5. The doctor uses ether to put the boy to sleep, and the boy's heart stops and he dies.


6. The family goes about their affairs.

The boy is "a child at heart," but he is doing a man's job on his own and the consequences are tragic.

In The Catcher in the Rye, how do Holden's feelings for women compare to his feelings for men?

Holden perceives men as sexual deviants, annoying bores or as phonies. He projects his insecurities about himself onto every male person he meets. His roommate, classmates and teachers are all used as projection devices for himself. He lumps them together into broad categories and dismisses them. The common theme of all these attributed qualities is that men should not be trusted around females. The one male person in his life that escapes his condemnation is, interestingly enough, his father.

Holden then views females as objects to adore and protect. Although he is cruel to some women, he is generally chivalrous towards the women he meets, regardless of social station. Whether it is Jane Gallagher or Phoebe, Holden feels women should be kept safe. This completes the earlier projected feelings about men. He then is unable to let himself have a real relationship with any female, except Phoebe, since that would violate rule number one, men should not be trusted with women.

In Sister Carrie, did Carrie and Drouet have sex?

Yes, they had sex. Drouet was keeping Carrie as his mistress in an apartment. Probably everybody thought they were married. The plain fact was that Carrie decided it was easier to be a "kept woman" than to support herself by doing grueling work in a factory. The reason this may not be clear is that these things could not be spelled out explicitly in any stories or novels at the time Sister Carrie was published. I believe the publisher's wife read the novel in manuscript and was shocked by the story, as innocuous as it was. She wanted her husband to renege on his commitment to publish the book, but he was forced to bring out a small edition under his contract with Dreiser. The novel did not do well because it received no advertising or other promotion. This was in 1900. When Carrie ran away with Hurstwood there was no mention of sex either. In fact, if I remember correctly, there was no explicit mention of sexual activity even in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a novel about the Roaring Twenties when women were supposedly becoming liberated.