solve for x 7 l 3x-4 l + 8 = 15

We'll subtract 8 both
sides:

7 l 3x-4 l = 15 - 8

7 l
3x-4 l = 7

We'll divide by
7:

 l 3x-4 l = 1

We'll have 2
cases:

1) 3x-4 for 3x-4
>=0

We'll add 4 both
sides:

3x>=4

We'll
divide by 3:

x>=4/3

The
interval of admissible values for x is [4/3 ,
+infinite)

We'll solve the
equation:

3x-4 = 1

We'll add 4
both sides:

3x = 5

x =
5/3

 Since x = 5/3 belongs to the interval [4/3 ,
+infinite), the equation has the solution x = 5/3.

2) -3x+4
for 3x-4 <0

The solution of the equation has to
belong to the interval

(-infinite, 
4/3)

How would you characterize Granny Weatherall in "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"?

Of course, the stream of consciousness narrative adopted
by the author gives us a real insight into Granny Weatherall's character. Clearly, if
you read this story, hopefully you cannot fail to identify the humour in this story -
from its very start, the character of Granny Weatherall dominates the pages and is funny
and sad in turn. Even the start of the story presents us with a funny moment as Granny
Weatherall shows her defiant spirit by her comment about the
doctor:

She
flicked her wrist neatly out of Doctor Harry's pudgy careful fingers and pulled the
sheet up to her chin. The brat ought to be in knee breeches. Doctoring around the
country with spectacles on his nose! "Get along now, take your schoolbooks and go.
There's nothing wrong with
me!"

Of course, what is funny
about this is that we think of doctors as being respectful figures in society -
certainly figures we do not address and think of like this. The juxtaposition with the
term of contempt "brat" and doctor shocks us and makes us laugh by revealing the kind of
character that Granny Weatherall is. This continues throughout the story as we see the
irreverent attitude revealed towards other characters such as Father
Connolly.

You might like to think of how conflict reveals
the character of Granny Weatherall. It is clear that the external conflict that Granny
Weatherall is facing is her stubbornness and determination against the mollycoddling (as
she sees it) that she is receiving from her daughter Cornelia, and others, such as
Doctor Harry and Father Connolly:

readability="14">

Well, she could just hear Cornelia telling her
husband that Mother was getting a little childish and they'd have to humour her. The
thing that most annoyed her was that Cornelia thought she was deaf, dumb and blind.
Little hasty glances and tiny gestures tossed around her and over her head saying,
"Don't cross her, let her have her way, she's eighty years old," and she sitting there
as if she lived in a thin glass
cage.

Granny Weatherall is
still a determined and proud woman, who is not giving in easily to death and the care
that others try to foist on her.

The internal conflict is
of course revealed in Granny Weatherall's memory of her jilting that still hurts her
even though it was so long ago. As she struggles to come to terms with it she shows how
she still remembers and is pained by the memory:

readability="11">

Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice
in the top of her mind. Don't let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty
of girls get jilted. You were jilted, weren't you? Then stand up to it. Here eyelids
wavered and let in streamers of blue-gray light like tissue paper over her
eyes.

Here we see Granny
Weatherall trying to convince herself that she wasn't hurt and trying to pull herself
together, but the final description reveals that the memory of her jilting still hurts
enough to bring tears to her eyes. Of course, the story ends with a second "jilting" as
Granny Weatherall resolves the internal conflict and accepts the fact that we are all
"jilted" in death - that we die alone and that this solitude is greater than any loss we
know in life. Yet the end of the story shows Granny Weatherall's strength and
determination in the face of this ultimate jilting.

Briefly give the gist of Books 3,4 and 5 from Homer's Iliad.

In Iliad 3, we have a duel between
Menelaus and Paris/Alexander. The winner of the duel will determine who gets "Helen and
all her treasure." After the duel, the two armies will make a peace treaty and the war
will end. Menelaus would have won the duel, but the goddess Aphrodite intervenes and
rescues Paris. The book ends with Paris and Helen in their bedroom at Troy, while the
Greeks were claiming that Menelaus was victorious.

In
Iliad 4, however, hostilities are renewed as Athena inspires one of
the Trojans to shoot an arrow at Menelaus. Much of the rest of the book is spent with
Agamemnon stirring some of the other leading Greeks to action. The book ends with the
Greeks and Trojans fighting vigorously against each
other.

Iliad 5 is one of the most
delightful and interesting books in the epic as the Greek Diomedes goes on a major
rampage. Students of Roman literature will note an appearance by Aeneas, hero of
Vergil's Aeneid. Diomedes knocks Aeneas unconscious with a massive
boulder, but Aphrodite rescues Aeneas (he is her son). Diomedes will not be stopped,
though. Inspired by Athena, Diomedes attacks and wounds Aphrodite and then wounds Ares
himself, who had come to aid Aphrodite.

Is Mary Maloney the lamb in Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter"?She is the lamb because of her weak-mind and innocence. When she's sewing & trying...

It seems as if you have misinterpreted Mary Maloney's
character.  First, the title of the story does not imply that a lamb turns into a
slaughterer; rather, it represents an innocent creature being led to its death--that
does not describe Mary.

While Mary does "slaughter" her
husband, it would be more appropriate to argue that the police (her husband's comrades)
are the lambs.  When the story opens, Mary's husband, a police officer, springs the news
on his pregnant wife that he is leaving her.  If you keep in mind the time setting of
the story, you see that Mary views herself as the dutiful wife who waits for her husband
to come home each day, hangs on his every word, caters to his every need, and then he
repays her in such a manner.  Divorce during the Maloneys' time would have still carried
somewhat of a social stigma especially when coupled with Mary's pregnancy.  As the
reader considers that all these thoughts fly through Mary's head as her husband talks,
he must admit that Mary's quick action--while reprehensible--is hardly that of an
innocent lamb.

Similarly, after Mary murders her husband,
she uses her innocent appearance and demeanor to fool the grocer and the men who would
have known her husband best.  In contrast, the police who show up to Mary's house might
as well be figurative lambs going to the slaughterhouse.  They pander to Mary's needs
and comfort her, refusing to see her as a suspect, and they eat the murder weapon to
appease the "distraught" young widow. Their failure to look past Mary's outward demeanor
demonstrates that they are the ones with the herd mentality.

What exactly do you think Hawthorne is trying to tell us about Pearl in The Scarlet Letter?Throughout the entire novel, the author compares Pearl...

Nathaniel Hawthorne gives us a lot of information and
commentary on Pearl throughout The Scarlet Letter, and it's up to
the reader to decide how he or she feels about her.  Pearl is a much more complex
character than she might seem at first.

You've mentioned
all the kind of "other-worldly" references to this daughter of Hester and Arthur. 
Clearly, his use of those words and images is an attempt to paint Pearl as a creature
beyondearthly.  Yet she is also quite in touch with the realities of life.  She plays
rough sometimes (as when she crippled a bird while playing or my favorite, when she
throws mud at her childish tormentors), and she's well aware of the severities of this
Puritan community, as when she plays make-believe and creates the elders and other stern
figures of the town. 

She's a typical spoiled child,
throwing tantrums (at the brookside) and taking advantage of her mother's lenience (as
she traipses through the cemetery or throws cockles at her mother's bosom).  Yet she has
an innate sense of justice, asking multiple times if Arthur will stand with them on the
scaffold in the daytime.  When he refuses, she shows him no
sympathy.

In short, Pearl as a young girl is a product of
an illicit relationship and nothing about her life is normal.  Just like her clothing,
Pearl is an outward embodiment of the turmoil and guilt in her parents' lives.  Once she
genuinely kisses her father one last time on the scaffold, Hawthorne tells us it's as if
a curse has been broken.  We now have hope that she will grow and mature into a loving,
caring adult.  The evidence of that is slim, but we know she married well and apparently
for love, that she was quite rich and had no economic worries, and that she still cared
for her mother--all signs of a relatively normal life and one which we might not expect,
given her early years.  This speaks to the bondage of guilt and sin and the freedom of
unconditional love.

What do we learn about Beowulf's character from his speech in lines 365-405 in Beowulf?The speech begins: Hail to you, Hrothgar! I am...

What you are asking about is characterization.  What
characterization is accomplished by Beowulf's
speech?

First, we learn that Beowulf has a sense of
duty:

My
people have said, the wisest, most knowing

And best of
them, that my duty was to go to the Danes'

Great
king.

The mead hall is
plagued by Grendel, and Beowulf feels it is his duty to come
help. 

We also learn that Beowulf has performed great
deeds:  rising out of the darkness of war covered in his enemies' blood, chaining five
giants, etc.  His deeds are his testament, his demonstration of
worthiness.

Beowulf also believes in fate, at least when he
is using rhetoric in the form of a speech:

readability="8">

...Now Grendel and I are
called

Together, and I've
come. 

His battle with
Grendel is his destiny, his fate.

Beowulf is also
independent--he requests to fight Grendel by himself--and honorable--he will use no
weapon, because Grendel uses no weapon. 

Finally, Beowulf
puts himself into God's hands.  He leaves it up to God to determine the outcome of the
battle. 

Scholars assume that these personality traits and
beliefs were important to Anglo-Saxons, in general.  Beowulf is probably the ideal
Anglo-Saxon hero.

I don't really understand what John Milton means by "shutting his Parkgate" in his speech Areopagitica.What is the meaning of this sentence: "And...

readability="19.763694951665">

Seeing therefore that those books,
& those in great abundance which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine,
cannot be suppresst without the fall of learning, and of all ability in disputation, and
that these books of either sort are most and soonest catching to the learned, from whom
to the common people whatever is hereticall or dissolute may quickly be convey'd, and
that evill manners are as perfectly learnt without books a thousand other ways which
cannot be stopt, and evill doctrine not with books can propagate, except a teacher
guide, which he might also doe without writing, and so beyond prohibiting, I am not able
to unfold, how this cautelous enterprise of licencing can be exempted from the number of
vain and impossible attempts. And he who were pleasantly dispos'd could not well avoid
to lik'n it to the exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by
shutting his Parkgate. [ href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/areopagitica/index.shtml">John
Milton]

In this
passage, Milton is discussing the possibility, wisdom and practicability of censuring
unsavory books in reference to "Spanish licensing." The books under question are what
Milton classifies as books that "taint both life and doctrine." His argument is that
common people without higher learning can acquire learning that is "hereticall or
dissolute" quite easily in many other ways, particularly from the learned who are drawn
to disputatious (questionable) books. He further declares that "evil manners" are
"perfectly learnt a thousand other ways" without the help of questionable
books.

Milton's conclusion therefore is that though there
are some who might be disposed (inclined) to attempt to suppressed the books in question
as they relate to Spanish licensing issue, all efforts at suppression of said books
would be like someone trying to keep crows imprisoned by shutting the gates to his/er
estate park grounds. This would be a foolish and futile effort to imprison crows (which
destroy agricultural fields) because crows would simply fly right up and over the gates
and away--to the grain fields. In other words, it is impossible to imprison crows by
putting them behind a gate, and it is equally impossible, in Milton's opinion, to
protect minds against the books in question by suppressing them.