Was Tom Walker emotional in the story?emotional word was one of my topics that i have to answer in my project!

Yes, Tom Walker was emotional.  His emotions were not necessarily typical, however.  When he sees the Devil in the forest for the first time, he is surprised, not frightened.  Tom Walker had not heard anyone approach, so when the figure who appeared to be a man, spoke, Tom was startled.  As soon as the Devil spoke and asked Tom what he was doing on the his (the Devil's) grounds, Tom became snide and defensive.  When the man finally let Tom know he was indeed, the Devil, Tom still wasn't afraid, in fact, he made a deal with the Devil.  Tom Walker is also emotional when he deals with his wife, but his emotion isn't love and caring, it is anger and loathing.  When it becomes apparent that the Devil took his wife, Tom is angry that his wife took their valuable candle sticks and figures that the Devil must have had a tough time dealing with her.  The most emotion that Tom shows, however, comes at the end of the story and at the end of Tom's life when a customer accuses Tom of usury. "Tom lost his patience and his piety."  He yelled at the customer, saying if he's made any money from the man, may the Devil take him (Tom).  Which, of course, the Devil did.

What is the major conflict in Oedipus Rex?

In literature, conflict can be defined as a struggle between two opposing forces.  This conflict can be external (between two characters) or internal (within one character).  In this play, there are many possibilities as to what the main conflict.

You could say that it is Oedipus's internal struggle against the idea that he is responsible for the plague. You could say that the major struggle is between Oedipus and Tireisias and Creon since they say he is the cause and he doesn't think he is.

My opinion is that the conflict is more abstract -- that it is a conflict between people and their fate.  I think that the play is about Oedipus's struggle against a fate that was preordained for him.

How does the movie Amelie relate to belonging?In what ways and ideas is it related?

In many ways, Amelie seeks to belong to the idea of expression of joy and positive energy in the world.  She commits herself to helping others and bringing joy to them and this is the idea to which she seeks to belong.  Part of this is motivated by the fact that her childhood was one of a lack of belonging.  There was little emotional belonging in her background and in her experiences growing up, as she was isolated from other kids and emotionally estranged from her parents.  This created a lack of belonging in her which probably helps to motivate her life of forging connection with others' visions of happiness.  Unlike the girl in the Renoir picture who seems to not fully belong in the world, reason why the painter can never quite get the expression in the painting, Amelie seeks to belong to the world by connecting others to a vision of happiness that might not be readily present.

What is the Wife of Bath's occupation?

As her title proclaims, The Wife of Bath was a wife. Along with this she is a maker of cloth, an adventursome traveler and a wealthy widow from having handled four out of five husbands well. There was much theological discussion in the latter half of the 14th century about the role and place of wives in a Catholic society. The doctrine was that wives were truly the daughters of Eve and, as such, were out to undermine their husbands in any way possible. In the Church's eyes (the Catholic Church was supreme at the time as the Protestant Reformation didn't occur until after Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517), wives could easily become "wicked women." Since the Wife of Bath (meaning she lived in Bath) has had five husbands, she perfectly fit the Church's definition of wicked woman.

What was the record for the phone marathon in The Pigman?

Dennis holds the record for the longest conversation in the phone marathon game.  He had once picked out a woman "who lived alone and was desperate to talk to anyone".  Dennis told the lady that he was calling because he had heard that she gave good advice, and he had a problem concerning a "hideous skin disease" which was certain to lead to his death if he did not find a cure.  According to Dennis, a rat had bitten off his nose when he was a baby, and skin grafts had not taken.  Dennis had been able to keep the woman discussing his problem on the phone for two hours and twenty-six minutes, which was the record for the longest conversation in the game.

The phone marathon is a game that John, Lorraine, Dennis, and Norton sometimes play when they are bored.  They take turns closing their eyes as they run their fingers down the phone book, and they must call the number at which they randomly stop and try to keep the person they call engaged in conversation for as long as they can.  On Wednesdays, the group can play at Dennis' house because his parents are not home, and on Sundays they use the phone at Norton's place because his parents do not mind if they gather at his house.  John and Lorraine's houses are off-limits for the game because both their parents have issues with their children tying up the phone in this manner.

It is Lorraine who chooses the Pigman's name from the phonebook during a game of phone marathon.  She had actually cheated a little bit, peaking when she was going through the book; she had chosen the Pigman because he lived on nearby Howard Street, and she had already thought up a ruse by which she could start up a conversation with him (Chapters 3-4).

What was the contribution of University Wits to Elizabethan drama?

Among the University Wits of the Elizabethan period, Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd stand out as theatrical contributors of great importance, but there were other relatively minor ones like Robert Greene, John Lyly, Thomas Nashe, George Peele and so on. Whether Thomas Middleton was a part of the group is debatable.

The primary contribution they have to the development of Elizabethan drama is that they are the first Oxford and Cambridge pass-outs to take up theatre as a profession. Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy paves the way for the use of the Senecan elements and the more refined and psychological revenge-tragedies by Shakespeare, Webster and Middleton, taking a cue from Seneca. Marlowe's plays, whether it is Dr. Faustus or The Jew of Malta or Edward II, concentrate on the complexity of the moral universe of man, the human dilemma of an anthropocentric Renaissance world, the figure of the overreacher, psychological complications and inner violence. Marlowe is also remembered for his eloquence and dramatic employment of blank-verse.

With Greene and Lyly, we have the mythological and pastoral style of comedy, the prevalence of feminine characters, a kind of slight satirical wit and use of verse--all elements that go on to shape the Elizabethan theatre. The process of collaborative composition is another trend set by these playwrights. The University Wits' significance lies in setting up the Elizabethan theatrical tradition and anticipating the hallmarks of the Shakespearean theatre.

What is the function of the Epistle in Ben Jonson's Volpone?

Ben Jonson's comedic Jacobean play Volpone (an Italian word meaning "The Big Fox") is introduced with an Epistle (epistle means letter, especially a formal one) that sets the philosophic background for Jonson's choices of structure for and principles in Volpone. Jonson thought an epistolary explanation was necessary for several reasons. These reasons were that he diverged from the then current comedic formulation; he disapproved of the laxity evident in his contemporaries poetry; he desired adherence to a more ancient purpose of play writing.

In comedic plays contemporaneous with Ben Jonson, the endings were resolved happily; sad endings were reserved for tragedies. Jonson correctly asserted that ancient Greek comedies sometimes had unhappy endings if an unhappy ending harmonized with the moral being instructed in the play. Jonson advocated adherence to the ancient types and to Aristotle's unities of time, place and action in which the play should cover no more than a twenty-four hour period of time. Jonson's ending, as he explains in the Epistle, breaks with his contemporaries and has a Greek-style unhappy ending. The Epistle serves as an apologia of this choice. Jonson asserts his choice is the only possible ending that could demonstrate his moral that teaches against greed and deception.

The second concern that Jonson addresses in his Epistle is the laxity of poetic works written by his contemporaries. In the previous Elizabethan age, Edmund Spenser, Phillip Sidney and William Shakespeare all adhered to the mimetic theory described by Sidney in his essay "An Apology for Poetry." In essence, poets are gifted with divine inspiration and in their poetry imitate (mimesis) the eternal truths toward which all human hearts and souls aspire, thereby acting as liaisons between truth and goodness and humanity. Jonson adhered to this mimetic theory while his contemporaries were finding it less compelling and writing verse that didn't live up to the Elizabethan standard. It is important to note that while plays were then written in poetry, not all poetry was in a play; this acknowledgment avoids confusion over the word "poetry" referring only to plays.

Jonson's displeasure, as stated in the Epistle, with his contemporaries plays was also founded on the disagreement about whether, in light of the mimetic quality of poetry, all plays (comedic or dramatic) must teach an uplifting moral. His contemporaries were writing comedies with happy endings and no instructive moral. Jonson criticized this failure and advocated that even comedies should present moral lessons, as Volpone does.