What are the characteristics of Pi in chapter 1?

In chapter one, Pi is intelligent - he discusses his academic studies and relates profound insight about them to the reader.  He is also reflective - he looks at his present life in light of his past and what happened to him.  He is also intimate with the reader, sharing his thoughts and feelings about his experience, his studies, death, life, religion, his hurts etc.

What did the hens do to rebel against the giving up their eggs.

The hens, rather than allow their eggs to be sold by Napoleon and his henchmen in chapter 7, lay their eggs on the rafters so that the eggs will smash on the floor of the barn.  They consider what Napoleon wants to do to be murder.  Because Napoleon and Whymper have agreed to sell 400 eggs a week, they punish the hens by not giving them any food.  The hens hold out for five days and then they give in, allowing Whymper to collect the 400 eggs a week.

In Katherine Mansfield's "The Garden Party," what would be some examples of the theme of experience versus inexperience?

Laura is very aware of her inexperience and youth and it causes her great discomfort when put in situations of authority.

When Laura was told to supervise the workers putting up the marquee, she is impressed with their natural ease with one another, as well as the task at hand. She feels all the more inadequate by her job of watching over them.

Laura attempts to be cool and calm as she sets about her task, and she decides to channel her mother's posture and attitude in an attempt to appear confident. When she got out the bread and butter, she realized that there was no where to put it down, and she could not even throw it away, so she was stuck holding it and feeling foolish.

Laura's embarrassment led her to appear strict and stare down the workers, while trying to instruct them with an air of competence she did not feel. Nothing worked, and in the end she felt foolish, and knew her mother or sisters would not have acted in such a way.

While at first idealizing the workers experience and ease, she soon learns that their lives are not carefree.

In "A Stench of Kerosene," which character's behavior is the most revealing?

I would have to go with Manak's behavior as the most revealing in Pritam's short story.  I believe that his speech and behavior reflect the oppressive nature of traditional social modes.  Manak is shown as someone who is constantly trying to fight the overarching condition of totality in way of the tradition and social honor that surround him. 

How he pleads with Guleri not to leave, and is then rebuffed by her is one example of this.  Another example is seen when he returns home to his mother. She is more than eager to replace Guleri with a new wife who will be able to bear Manak's children, and she rebukes Manak for his sadness in the process. These are both moments where his impotence against the traditional social structure is evident. 

Manak's emptiness and vacant stares (when Bhavani tells him that Guleri has committed self- immolation upon learning of Manak's second wife) display another element of how Manak is powerless to stop the train and "progress" of modernity.  At the same time, I think that his rejection of the child, in the end, is a small moment where he actually speaks out against tradition, something that will become silenced in due time. 

I don't think that Manak is the saddest character or the one most deserving of empathy or sympathy.  That has to be Guleri, who leaves her husband thinking all is well, but ends up having to set fire to herself out of shame for being unable to bear children. Yet, I think that Pritam constructs the character of Manak in such a way that he is shown to be an individual who detests the social and traditional structure in which he lives, but one who lacks the full throated control to reject it and leave it. 

Perhaps, his actions at the end are the start of a process that already claimed two casualties in Manak's love and Guleri, herself.  It is in this where I think that his characterization is the most revealing in the emptiness of an individual who dislikes tradition, but remains a part of it.

What does Hamlet's fourth soliloquy really mean? Act III scene 1 lines 56–89, "To be, or not to be."

It is still not clear if the Ghost's information is real, is true, much as it fits his own'take' on the situation, just as it is questionable if the Ghost is 'real. He requires more proof, and since the conclusion he believes is true would be treasonous to Claudius, he is very wary of putting it out there, so he decides to test his theory, albeit now that it has been galvanized by the Ghost's coroborration, it is still not clearly, objectively true, and he knows that to pursue the revenge he would like might mean his own death, or further, the death of other innocents (mother, Ophelia, courtiers,unpredictable( as he still cannot tell how complicitous the rest of the court is in the murder of his father. Certainly, Polonius, Ophelia's father seems hand-in-glove with Claudius, and what of Gertrude? Who has benefitted from old Hamlet's death? They are all suspect to young Hamlet.?. He is highly aware that he is the deposed Prince, his safe position has been stolen by Claudus, and he requires a court consensus before he rightfully takes any action against Claudius, happy though it wouldmake him to do so. He is also sorry, angry at his mother's ignorant re-marriage, blithely unconcious of the consequences of what she did.

As he sees Ophelia enter, he hopes she will remember all his sins, and so distance herself emotionally from him, as he knows he must get her to separate, so he can take the dangerous actions which lay somewhere before him.

What lessons does the book teach us about our present and our future?

At the time that Mary Shelley created the book Frankenstein the idea of using body parts to replace other parts of a human was unheard of.  People were mostly speculative about what medical advances the future would hold and in some places the procedure of bleeding was still used to treat infection or misunderstood diseases.

Modern science has been developing better and better skills at harvesting and transplanting organs into human beings.  What had started with putting a baboon heart in infant baby Faye in Loma Linda, California, has now arrived at the ability of mankind to be able to have procedures such as heart, kidney, and lung transplants, and even fingers, toes, and arms  reattached.  Now the possibility of a person being cloned has neared the probability stage.

If the book teaches us anything it is to be careful what actions we take ethically in regards to human beings and their lives.  Science has advanced farther than our legal abilities can solve the conflicts that have arisen from the procedures.  The future may well lead mankind into greater and more challenging ethical issues and the reality that one is dealing with a real human who has feelings, needs, and opinions needs to be taken into careful consideration and be ethically challenged before we go to far.

How does Shakespeare dramatize the conflicting views of nature in King Lear?

To expound on the previous post, for the noble characters in the play, namely Kent, Gloucester, the Fool, Cordelia, and Edgar, the ‘Reason’ of the ‘natural’ world order is to remain loyal to and preserve the orthodox view of ‘nature,’ (which maintains that the established social order should be respected and maintained) regardless of the suffering they must endure. There is a contrasting theory of ‘Reason’ of the ‘natural’ world orderi n the play however. For the evil characters, namely Regan, Goneril, Cornwall, Oswald, and Edmund, the ‘Reason’ is to destroy the ‘natural’ world order. These characters wish to topple the orthodox hierarchy, using whatever means necessary, and place themselves atop a new one.

Of course, the storm that rages during the play, with Lear himself caught in it, is a physical manifestation of nature itself raging against this upheavel.