What events or situations in The Outsiders prove that Ponyboy is heroic and a good person?

I think the best situation to use as proof of Ponyboy's heroism and upstanding moral character is the burning church sequence.  Ponyboy and Johnny are on the run after Johnny stabbed and killed a Soc to save Ponyboy's life.  They are hiding out in an abandoned church.  After awhile, they are able to leave the church and return home.  But as they are leaving the church, Johnny and Ponyboy realize that the church is on fire and that a group of children have wandered into the structure. Without any thought for their own personal safety, Ponyboy and Johnny rush back into the church and save the children.  That's an act of heroism and clearly shows that Ponyboy cares for other people more than he cares for himself.  

Ponyboy's interactions with Cherry also show that he is a good person. He treats her with respect and dignity.  He doesn't try to woo her with dirty talk like the other Greasers, and he doesn't cast her off as some Soc that doesn't know anything either.  Pony treats her fairly.  

In Chapter 24 of To Kill A Mockingbird, why does Miss Maudie get so angry at Mrs. Merriweather?

In Chapter 24 of To Kill A Mockingbird, some of the women in Maycomb are gathered at Scout's house as Aunt Alexandra hosts them with Calpurnia's help. Mrs. Merriweather, who Scout describes as "the most devout lady in Maycomb," (page 234; page numbers vary according to the edition), spends some time speaking about her favorite missionary activity, and then she starts criticizing Atticus without referring to him by name. Miss Maudie becomes angry when Mrs. Merriweather criticizes Atticus's defense of Tom Robinson.

While eating food in Atticus's house, Mrs. Merriweather says:

To Kill A Mockingbird

"I tell you there are some good but misguided people in this town. Good, but misguided. Folks in this town who think they’re doing right, I mean. Now far be it from me to say who, but some of ‘em in this town thought they were doing the right thing a while back, but all they did was stir ’em up" (page 236; page numbers may vary). 

Mrs. Merriweather is referring to Atticus's insistence that Tom Robinson, an African-American man, have a fair trial in a southern town that regards African-Americans as people who do not merit these types of rights. She believes that this type of action, while perhaps guided by good morals, has instead given the African-American community the wrong idea. She fears that they are "stirred up," meaning that they might start agitating for their rights. 

In response, Miss Maudie says, “His food doesn’t stick going down, does it?” (page 237; page numbers may vary). This line means that Mrs. Merriweather is eating Atticus's food happily without choking on it while she is criticizing him. Miss Maudie points out Mrs. Merriweather's hypocrisy in eating Atticus's food while speaking ill of him. 

What was the name for the group of congressmen who wanted war to begin with Britain?

This question is referring to the years before the War of 1812. The congressmen who wanted war with Britain were known as "war hawks." Most were relatively young, as opposed to their older colleagues who remembered the Revolutionary War, and most were from the South and especially the West. Many Western congressmen were eager to invade British Canada to seize British lands, and, at the very least, to destroy perceived British influence among Indian peoples around the Great Lakes. These men were especially outraged by British offenses to American honor, especially the practice of impressment, which indicated that the British Navy had no respect for the United States. The most famous of these so-called "war hawks," who mainly identified with the Republican Party, were Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. 

What heroic traits has Odysseus displayed in the episodes with the Lotus-eaters and the Cyclops?

When his ships arrive at the land of the Lotus-eaters, Odysseus intelligently sends only three men to investigate the inhabitants.  This way, he only sacrifices three men if the natives are violent (which they are not).  When those three eat the lotus offered to them, they no longer care to return home, and Odysseus must forcibly drag them back to the ship.  He could simply have left them there and saved himself the trouble, but his loyalty to them and their families (who are waiting for them back home) compelled him to save them from themselves.  This shows his compassion as well.

Although Odysseus certainly does make some missteps with Polyphemus, the Cyclops, he does display his forethought and bravery when he realizes that he cannot kill the monster but will have to wound him instead.  Although Odysseus could kill him, he realizes that there will be no one to lift the stone from the door to the cave and that he and his men will perish inside.  Instead, he devises a plan to get the monster drunk and then stab him with a sharp stake in his one eye, blinding him.  This will mean that he is still capable of moving the stone but less able to catch Odysseus and his men.  This plan is ingenious and thoughtful; a man with less forethought might simply have killed the monster and condemned himself and his crew to certain death.

What was the most important reason why prohibition was ended in 1933?

There were two important reasons why prohibition ended in 1933. The first reason was that prohibition wasn’t working. Despite the ban on the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcohol, people still got alcohol and drank. People joined private, secret clubs, called speakeasies where they would drink. Even President Harding would drink in the White House with his poker-player buddies. Mayor LaGuardia of New York City was known for saying he would have needed to hire hundreds of thousands of police officers just to police the police that were drinking. Organized crime took over the distribution of alcohol, leading to violent confrontations. While prohibition may have seemed like a good idea, it just wasn’t working. People really didn’t want to give up drinking alcohol. It was time to end the mockery people were making of the 18th amendment. The 21st amendment ended prohibition in 1933.

Another reason why prohibition ended was that we were in the Great Depression. If drinking became legal again, more jobs would be created throughout the alcohol industry. Since we had a record high unemployment rate, anything that would help create jobs would be a good thing. The Great Depression played a smaller role in ending the 18th amendment. Creating jobs was a side benefit to approving the 21st amendment.

Does the restrictive nature of school and church lead Tom Sawyer and other children to be more inventive outside the school?

In Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain articulates a parody of the two institutions that provide the pillars of society: school and church, and very especially, Sunday school. Tom is a romantic hero with a feverish imagination who resists the confinement, physical and emotional, of the classroom and the chapel by continuously devising new adventures in the river and the forest. With his Quixotic mentality, Tom becomes the natural leader of his gang, always imagining new and exciting undertakings to avoid the dullness of life in the town of St. Petersburg. An avid reader of romantic novels such as Robin Hood, as don Quixote was a voracious reader of novels of chivalry, Tom populates the natural surroundings of the town with pirates and treasures, villains and damsels in distress, and engages his gang in the most feverish, and at times dangerous, games.

School and church both serve the purpose of transmitting social, cultural and religious values, but in St. Petersburg both institutions also symbolize the profound hypocrisy of its inhabitants and the superficiality of the teachings that both instil in the children. For example, religious instruction consists of learning the Bible by heart, which Tom refuses to do, even though he is able to recite whole passages of Robin Hood. While the town represents the space of prosaic and hypocritical social conventions, the river represents the space of freedom from social constraints and the realm of the imagination. Twain was always critical of fake religiosity and repressive schooling, as seen once and again in his writings, and he famously said: "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." Like the American Transcendentalists, and like Walt Whitman, Twain thought that true learning was found in nature, not in the classroom.

What is Wordsworth's theory of poetry?

In the first statement of the 1802 edition, Wordsworth says the poems in Lyrical Ballads are an experiment of "fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation." So, one of the goals that Wordsworth has with this collection of poems is to use real language. In other words, he wants to make poetry from the language that people actually use. This was an attempt to get away from the formal style of his predecessors, namely the Neoclassical poets such as Alexander Pope. And the "vivid sensation" appeals to the poet's provocation of emotion rather than the more rational style of something like Pope's "An Essay on Man." 

Wordsworth also focused on the common man and this goes along with his focus on real or common language. Now, his poetry is still poetic, so to speak, but it was a shift from poetry as a formal, structured poetics to something more common and emotive. He wanted to explore how ordinary events and feelings could be understood in extraordinary ways. He chose to focus on rural settings and people and to explore their feelings "because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings; and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." Thus, Wordsworth also was enchanted by the emotive and transcendent power of nature. The natural world, the rural lifestyle, and the realness of language and feelings were all inspirational elements for Wordsworth's new theory of poetry. This is why Wordsworth could write a poem about a cloud in which he contemplates nature, his existence, and his role as a poet. 

Since Wordsworth was tapping into "real language" and more common subjects (rendered in imaginative, extraordinary ways), he notes that some of his poems might be as easily read as prose. He is not trying to erase the line between prose and poetry, but he is illustrating how his brand of poetry does utilize a more free, prose style while still presented in poetic verse. And he notes that any subject is more likely to be read in poetic form, " . . . the one in prose and the other in verse, the verse will be read a hundred times where the prose is read once." Such is the accessibility of poetry and such would be the accessibility of Wordsworth's subject matter: common life and language. 

Lastly, Wordsworth's theory about writing poetry is often summed up as writing from the spontaneous overflow of emotion reflected in tranquility. The poet should contemplate the simple things, nature or rural life, but he should allow himself to be emotionally affected by the deep significance of such things: 

I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.