Does the written or performed version of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech have better ethos?

Ethos is one of the three rhetorical, or persuasive, appeals that Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, discussed. Ethos is an appeal to authority or credibility. The other appeals are pathos, an appeal to emotions, and logos, an appeal to reason. 

Watching or even listening to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, "I Have a Dream" speech has a more powerful ethos appeal than simply reading it. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered the speech in Washington, D.C., in front of the Lincoln Memorial to a group of 250,000 people who had assembled as part of the largest gathering that had ever met in the nation's capital. Just seeing the crowds is impressive, and that helps build MLK's ethos. In addition, when you listen to or watch the speech, you will hear audience reactions punctuating certain phrases. The approbation of the crowd makes you want to respond in the same way, again bolstering the credibility of the speech. 

Some of the specific appeals to authority MLK uses are reinforced by the setting, which comes across better when you watch the speech. MLK refers to the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, before whose statue he stands. And as he draws on the authority of the nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, it is all the more stirring when you see him standing in the seat of the very government that eventually rose from that document. Finally, when MLK calls upon the authority of the Bible or Negro spirituals, his claims are made more powerful when you hear his voice because the cadence and dialect he uses reflect the tone of a Southern gospel preacher. 

For these reasons, to appreciate the full power of the ethos appeal of this speech, you should watch it rather than just read it.

Explain what is strange about the condition of Jem's pants when he retrieves them.

In Ch. 6 Jem, Scout, and Dill all sneak into the Radley yard. They see a shadow of a man come at them from inside the house and they get so scared that they run back out of the yard, and Jem loses his pants because they snag on the bottom of the fence.

Later that night he goes back to retrieve them, but it is not until Ch. 7 that we find out the condition of the pants. Apparently, when Jem went back for them they were "sloppily mended" and left on the fence for him. 

Soon after, the kids discover a ball of twine in the knothole and we can assume that Boo mended the pants and left the twine. 

What can we understand to be the writer's own attitude toward the lottery and the stoning in the story "The Lottery"?

I think that Jackson's attitude towards the stoning and lottery is meant to generate thought about what we do to other people in our daily lives.

Jackson does not speak of her judgment in a didactic manner in "The Lottery."  In fact, the entire style of the short story is one where "no judgments are made."  Jackson does not let any of her own thoughts get in the way of what is happening in the town and how it proceeds with its ritual. However, when reflecting about what she wanted to depict, Jackson wanted to focus on the role that cruelty plays in our lives:  "I hoped by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general humanity in their own lives." Jackson's own attitude towards the stoning and the lottery is to provide a view into the savagery that human beings perpetrate upon one another.

Another aspect of Jackson's attitude towards the stoning and the lottery lies in the story's historical context.  Many believe that the way Jackson depicts "fierce events"  represent " a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the bomb."  Jackson writes "The Lottery" in a world emerging from the destruction of the atomic bomb and the Holocaust.  It is a world where the fear of Communism in America gave birth to McCarthyism.  This historical context surrounds Jackson, and her attitude towards such realities are evident in her short story. 

`y = sqrt(x), x = 0, y = 2` Use the method of cylindrical shells to find the volume of the solid obtained by rotating the region bounded by...

The shell has the radius y, the cricumference is `2pi*y` and the height is `y^2 - 0` , hence, the volume can be evaluated, using the method of cylindrical shells, such that:

`V = 2pi*int_0^2 y*(y^2 - 0) dy`

`V = 2pi*int_0^2 y^3 dy`

Using the formula `int y^n dy = (y^(n+1))/(n+1) ` yields:

`V = 2pi*(y^4)/4|_0^2`

`V = pi*(y^4)/2|_0^2`

`V = pi*(2^4 - 0^4)/2`

`V = 8pi`

Hence, evaluating the volume, using the method of cylindrical shells, yields `V = 8pi.`

How does "The Raven" relate to Poe's real life, aside from paralleling his grief for his wife Virginia?

Perhaps it doesn't.

If you want to, you can definitely point out the various tragedies of Poe's real life, the struggles he endured that involved everything from gambling debts to drinking to strained familial relationships to the death of his wife, and you can find reflections of those struggles in his stories and poems about tortured souls, especially in his poem "The Raven." In fact, Richard Kopley suggests in his introduction to The Raven and Other Poems that "an appreciation of the losses that Poe had endured in his life increases our understanding" of Poe's work.

But if you're trying to look too closely to confirm your guess that the poem and the poet's life have deeper parallels, you may not be successful.

However, we do have some hints about what Poe was thinking when he wrote "The Raven."

For example, we do know that he wanted us to interpret the bird as a symbol of memory. He wanted us to understand the raven itself as the embodiment of a terribly sad, ongoing remembrance. (I'm getting this from Kopley's introduction that I mentioned a moment ago.) This makes sense when you think of how the bird can only say the same phrase again and again: it reveals how we find only limited comfort in our memory of people we've lost, since we can only access recollections of the finite things they said and did, since they will no longer say or do anything else or continue to interact with us. 

We also have some extensive commentary from Poe himself on what he was trying to accomplish, literary-wise, by writing "The Raven." You can find his thoughts in his published essay entitled "The Philosophy of Composition." You'll find a bunch of insights there, including the fact that he purposefully wrote that poem to appeal to popular taste as well as to the taste of the critics. That fact alone might convince us that Poe was primarily working to create a masterful (and profitable) piece of literature rather than use it to subtly express his own personal struggles.

How can I respond to this essay prompt? "Imagine you are character in a work of literature. Discuss how you relate to the character, what traits...

Break it down before you get started. Making an outline is always helpful. The first thing you have to do is choose your character. Think about the things you have read--is there a character that you strongly related to? Has there been a character that you have "rooted for" as you were reading? Has there been a character that has reminded you of yourself?

Once you have chosen your character, you need to choose two instances from the work illustrating choices the character has made or a specific action. One will be a decision that you agree with--explain why you agree with this decision. One will be a decision you disagree with--explain what you would have done differently.

Your thesis paragraph (the first paragraph of your paper) should indicate a few things. It should identify the character you are discussing and the work the character is from. It should also introduce the ideas you will be talking about in your paper in terms of the moments of the work you have chosen to look at. The body of your paper should explore these moments in detail.

It sounds like a personal opinion paper, so you can probably use the word "I"--but I would check with the instructor on that before you start writing.

Good luck and have fun! This sounds like it could be a fun assignment.

How did Enlightenment thinkers influence the Declaration of Independence?

The men that signed the Declaration of Independence, as well as the man who wrote it, were very much influenced by Enlightenment political theory.  The Declaration of Independence stated that if a government does not protect the freedoms of its citizens, the citizens have the right to overthrow said government.  This is the idea of a social contract that grew out of Enlightenment thought.  Jean Jacques Rousseau spoke of legitimate governments that citizens should submit to.  These are governments that are not tyrannical in nature.  

John Locke speaks of natural rights that the government cannot deny its subjects.  These rights, as Locke defines them, are life, liberty, and property.  Thomas Jefferson, in writing the Declaration of Independence, quoted John Locke nearly verbatim in discussing the unalienable rights of man (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.)  Enlightenment ideals of equality and popular sovereignty are also prevalent in the Declaration of Independence.