Blake Douglas
eNotes Educator
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1079
Answers Posted
448
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About
AP Chem/Bio teacher, author, search and rescue volunteer
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in The Odyssey
Zeus's moral appears to be that one should never defy the will of the gods. In book I, line 55, Zeus mentions that Aigisthos, the murderer of Agamemnon, had been specifically warned by Hermes not... -
Answered a Question in Roman Empire
Key Similarities: The Roman and Greek civilizations shared many of the same attitudes, ideas, and symbols in philosophy, mythology, and religion. In simple terms, the Romans regarded the Greeks as... -
Answered a Question in Oedipus Rex
Oedipus is faced with philosophical issues concerning fate. Fate is sometimes a confusing subject in regards to its role in a story. In Western storytelling it's often seen as a binary good-or-bad... -
Answered a Question in Heraclitus
Heraclitus was not only spare in his explanations, but his only known work exists merely in fragments. The piecemeal verses we still have of his writing render it difficult to tell if he was being... -
Answered a Question in If—
The entire poem is essentially a single, run-on sentence spaced with commas, colons, and semicolons, listing a series of abilities, habits, and virtues, which will ostensibly give their possessor... -
Answered a Question in Iliad
While the film retains the enmity between Achilles and Agamemnon, and the causes of the Trojan war, it departs significantly in the way that it aligns Achilles and Hector with a more modern,... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
Admittedly, the greatest difficulty in approaching this question from the perspective of an advisor and tutor is the lack of additional and specific criteria, combined with the abundant amount of... -
Answered a Question in Treasure Island
When the remaining pirates set off to find the treasure, Gunn, Gray, and Dr. Livesey realize they may not make it to the place where the treasure was originally buried in time to intercept the... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
Kennings are compound metaphors common in literature derived from Old Norse linguistic traditions. Functionally they appear may appear frivolous or unnecessarily abstract, but are intended to... -
Answered a Question in Treasure Island
The "faithful party" refers to the members of the crew of the Hispaniola who can be trusted not to side with the pirates. Not counting Jim, since he is a boy, there are six men in the... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
We don't even have to look to the end of the book to see that Ralph loses his confidence. At the beginning of Chapter 5, when Ralph is thinking about how to conduct a "serious" meeting, there are... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
This is a reference to a specific moment in Chapter 4, where Ralph is said to have inadvertently "asserted his chieftainship" better through casual passive aggression than if he had thought about... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
The first person to die is the boy with the mulberry-colored birthmark on his face, who first spoke of the Beast during the assembly. The boy's death is not narrated, nor is his body found;... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
Initially, Jack paints his face in order to hide himself better from the pigs he's hunting. He concludes that the pigs can't smell him, but they can clearly see him as he stalks them, and so he... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
The pilot, or rather, his body, arrive on the island suspended by his parachute after the boys all fall asleep. Because they're sleeping, they fail to see the "sign" that Ralph wished the grown-ups... -
Answered a Question in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Rikki-tikki is a mongoose, an animal similar to a weasel with a reputation for being a particularly effective enemy of snakes. Rikki-tikki is washed out of his home by a flood, and arrives... -
Answered a Question in Treasure Island
Pew is a pirate, characterized by his blindness, cruelty, and the contradiction between his helplessness and aggression. According to Long John Silver in a later chapter, Silver lost his leg in the... -
Answered a Question in Treasure Island
Captain Bones is said to have chosen the Benbow Inn because it is isolated and has few visitors. This is confided to Jim by Bones's porter, who accompanied him to the Inn when he first arrived, and... -
Answered a Question in Treasure Island
"The captain" is Billy Bones, a grizzled and unpleasant sailor who stays at the inn for months, falling far behind on payments for his boarding, and at this point in the story, has just died of... -
Answered a Question in Fahrenheit 451
Beatty is a complicated figure. Depending upon one's interpretation and chosen focus, Beatty can be seen as fulfilling a variety of roles, some of them contradictory, but most of them are... -
Answered a Question in Fahrenheit 451
Montag and Beatty have a relationship that is both antagonistic and reflective. Beatty is often characterized as "playing cat-and-mouse" with Montag, and Montag ultimately kills him, which depicts... -
Answered a Question in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
There are a few moral lessons in the story, but most of them are implicit. There is no precisely-worded statement that says "this is what Jekyll did wrong", but it's fairly easy to follow such a... -
Answered a Question in King Solomon's Mines
Proverbs are short sayings that encapsulate some generalized truth or advice that is easily understood. One is provided near the beginning of the story, as Quatermain is apologizing for his lack of... -
Answered a Question in To Build a Fire
In "To Build a Fire," the primary reason for the man's death is not the cold itself or the lack of a fire, although these are the most direct and empirical reasons. The real reason is his pride, in... -
Answered a Question in The Stranger
Meursault's lawyer, upon meeting him, is a bit horrified at Meursault's apparent lack of emotion, insight and instinct for self-preservation. Meursault seems not to be aware, nor to care, that his... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
The word "pathetic," in modern and common usage, is typically defined in terms of being sad, weak or contemptible. However, the word is actually rooted in the Greek word "pathos," which means... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
When Beowulf hears that Grendel has been terrorizing Heorot, he decides to travel there to lend his aid to Hrothgar. This explanation begins on line 194. Beowulf is said to be beloved by the Geats,... -
Answered a Question in The Sniper
"The Sniper," a short story, describes a conflict between two unnamed snipers during the Irish Civil War in 1922. The main character is the Republican sniper, who has been camped out on a rooftop... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
Gender and power are closely tied in Macbeth, and they can be examined from a variety of perspectives. At the most superficial level, we can examine who has "power" and who does not. Arguably, the... -
Answered a Question in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, or just Rikki-tikki as he is called throughout the story, is a mongoose in the eponymous story that is collected in Kipling's The Jungle Book. A mongoose is similar to a weasel,... -
Answered a Question in To Build a Fire
"To Build a Fire" takes its title from the main character's goal during the second half of the story. The anonymous man, a fortune-seeker and woodsman, is hiking across the frozen Yukon wilderness... -
Answered a Question in To Build a Fire
There are a variety of reasons for this, most of them subtle, and not necessarily crucial to understanding the story or main character, but it's an informative piece of imagery nonetheless. First,... -
Answered a Question in To Build a Fire
"To Build a Fire" is one of Jack London's more famous short pieces, and has two versions; the first had a somewhat more optimistic ending in which the main character, an anonymous male... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
"Epic simile" is also called Homeric simile, after its use in the Iliad and the Odyssey. As opposed to the standard simile, which tends to make a more straightforward comparison of "X is like... -
Answered a Question in Ozymandias
Irony is one of those concepts that's a bit difficult to nail down in some cases, and double irony even more so. Irony is generally defined as a statement or event that is the opposite of what's... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
To answer this, we should look at what we might consider to be evidence of a character being viewed as a leader; They can be specifically acclaimed as a leader, essentially by another character... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
Beowulf inspired a number of similar stories, especially Tolkien's--which share several literary and cultural elements--and particularly The Hobbit. The point of view in The Hobbit is shifted away... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
Beowulf doesn't really announce a specific reason for his intention to slay Grendel. The tone of the poem, and the manner in which the author regards Grendel (calling him hellspawn and a descendant... -
Answered a Question in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Henry Jekyll describes his worst faults at the end of the story, in the section titled "Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case." The statement begins as something of an autobiography, telling of... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
This assembly takes place at the beginning of Chapter 8, just after the boys return from the mountaintop where Ralph, Roger and Jack saw the Beast (which was really the body of a dead pilot).... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
The word "pathetic" is often, hastily, interpreted as a value judgment, implying that something is weak or inferior, mostly because this is the way the word is commonly used in language today.... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
There are many variants and interchangeable details in the archetype of the "hero's journey," which can make it difficult to simplify it to any cohesive set of core events or plot points crucially... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
Beowulf's battle with Grendel begins on line 750 when Grendel seizes Beowulf's arm, not knowing that it is Beowulf, nor knowing anything of his strength. However, he immediately realizes that... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
Jack supposedly supports the rules at first; when the boys first suggest having rules, such as the conch giving its holder the sole privilege to speak, Jack responds enthusiastically, saying... -
Answered a Question in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The description of the year's passage comes at the beginning of the second part of the story, visualizing how winter gives way to spring, crops grow and are harvested, and then things begin to rot,... -
Answered a Question in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain has a great number of virtues and strengths that the author spends considerable time detailing. One of Gawain's greatest strengths is his reputation; it precedes and acclaims him... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
Ralph poses this question to Piggy following the splintering of the tribes and Ralph's realization that not only do most of the boys completely fail to understand the importance of being rescued,... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
Defining "successful leadership" is a task all of its own; Jack and Ralph were both successful leaders, but in very different ways. A good generalization would involve establishing the goals for a... -
Answered a Question in Lord of the Flies
It helps, in this case, to define exactly what a "troubled community" is. From a literary perspective, we can say that this is a group of people sharing some common identity, facing a conflict that... -
Answered a Question in The Devil and Tom Walker
"Melancholy" is an interesting and appropriate word to use for the description of a location that has relevance to the mood of the writing. This term is often loosely defined as sad, gloomy or...
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