How does Oberon's plan for Titania go wrong?Act 3, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare.

Oberon, traditionally associated with order in A
Midsummer Night's Dream, causes chaotic activity in this
act.  He has given Puck instructions to anoint the youth wearing "the Athenian garment";
however, Puck mistakenly anoints the eyes of Lysander with the love portion, instead of
those of Demetrius.  When Lysander opens his eyes, then, he falls in love with Helen who
has awakened him after entering the woods in pursuit of Demetrius.  With the potion on
his eyes, Lysander falls in love with Helen, but she believes that he mocks her as he
speaks of his regret about loving Hermia.

When Lysander
does see Hermia, he no longer loves her; he loathes her.  The arguing of Oberon and
Titania has caused  the natural world to be at odds with itself.  In his efforts to
control Titania and bring peace to his marriage, which will effect a settling down of
Nature, Puck's mistake causes more unrest.

Oberon plans to
take the changeling child of Titania while she is under the spell of love. However,
Oberon is unaware that Bottom has entered the forest to practice a play with the other
mechanicals.  An observer of their bungled practice is Puck, who turns Bottom's head
into the head of an ass.  After this trick, Titania awakens, and looks first at Bottom,
falling in love with the man who has the donkey's
head.

What follows is hilarious as Bottom, unaware of his
changed head,  he accepts his position as lover to the fairy queen when she tells him "I
love thee":

readability="19">

methinks, mistress, you should have little
reason

for that; and yet, to say the truth, reason and love
keep

little company together now-a-days; the more the
pity,

that some hones neighbours will not make them
friends.

Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.
(3.1.134)

Bottom banters with
the other fairies, a comical scene, indeed, as a man whose head looks like that of a
donkey criticizes others.

How does Oberon's plan for Titania go wrong?Act 3, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare.

Oberon, traditionally associated with order in A Midsummer Night's Dream, causes chaotic activity in this act.  He has given Puck instructions to anoint the youth wearing "the Athenian garment"; however, Puck mistakenly anoints the eyes of Lysander with the love portion, instead of those of Demetrius.  When Lysander opens his eyes, then, he falls in love with Helen who has awakened him after entering the woods in pursuit of Demetrius.  With the potion on his eyes, Lysander falls in love with Helen, but she believes that he mocks her as he speaks of his regret about loving Hermia.

When Lysander does see Hermia, he no longer loves her; he loathes her.  The arguing of Oberon and Titania has caused  the natural world to be at odds with itself.  In his efforts to control Titania and bring peace to his marriage, which will effect a settling down of Nature, Puck's mistake causes more unrest.

Oberon plans to take the changeling child of Titania while she is under the spell of love. However, Oberon is unaware that Bottom has entered the forest to practice a play with the other mechanicals.  An observer of their bungled practice is Puck, who turns Bottom's head into the head of an ass.  After this trick, Titania awakens, and looks first at Bottom, falling in love with the man who has the donkey's head.

What follows is hilarious as Bottom, unaware of his changed head,  he accepts his position as lover to the fairy queen when she tells him "I love thee":

methinks, mistress, you should have little reason

for that; and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep

little company together now-a-days; the more the pity,

that some hones neighbours will not make them friends.

Nay, I can gleek upon occasion. (3.1.134)

Bottom banters with the other fairies, a comical scene, indeed, as a man whose head looks like that of a donkey criticizes others.

Discuss the features of metaphysical poetry in Donne's poems.

The term “metaphysical poetry” was not a term used by
Donne or by his contemporaries when referring to poems by him or other poets of his
time.  The term was first used, when referring to Donne, by John Dryden in 1693 when he
complained that Donne “affects the Metaphysics . . . in his amorous verses, where nature
only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of
philosophy, when he should engage their hearts.” Later, the great critic Samuel Johnson,
in his Lives of the Poets, wrote that “about the beginning of the
seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical
poets,” of whom Donne was the chief.  The term “metaphysical,” then, was used both by
Dryden and by Johnson more as a term of disapproval than as a merely descriptive
term.

I’ve taken both of these quotations from
The Wordsworth Companion to Literature in English, edited by Ian
Ousby (1994; originally published by Cambridge University Press in
1988).  Ousby’s volume lists a number of features normally associated with “metaphysical
poetry,” many of which can be found, for instance, in Donne’s famous poem “A
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.”  Such traits include the
following:

• “extravagant conceits” (that is,
  elaborately sustained comparisons).  For example, in lines 25-36, Donne compares the two
  lovers to the two “feet” (one pointed, one containing a pencil) of the kind of compasses
  used to draw perfect circles.


• “far-fetched . . .
  comparisons.”  For example, in the opening lines of “A Valediction,” Donne compares the
  leave-taking of two true lovers to the way a soul peacefully leaves the body of a dying
  virtuous person.


• “wit,” as when Donne says that
  

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Dull sublunary lovers’
love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot
admit

Absence . . .
(13-15)

In other words,
lovers whose love is earthly (“sublunary”) rather than spiritual cannot stand to be
physically separated from one another.  Note the witty word-play on “sense” and
“Absence.”  Note also the paradoxical wittiness of claiming that something’s “soul is
sense” (paradoxical because soul and sensuality are usually considered
opposites).

• “combination of dissimilar images,”
  as when Donne, in stanza three, combines imagery of earthquakes with imagery of movement
  of the heavenly spheres.


• “a style that is energetic,
  uneven and vigorous,” as when Donne departs from normal iambic meter (in which odd
  syllables are unaccented and even syllables are accented) in line 26, which would be
  scanned as follows “As STIFF TWIN COMpasES are TWO.”  Placing three strongly stressed
  syllables right next to one another, as Donne does here, was a deliberate choice of a
  rhythm that could well be described as “energetic, uneven and
  vigorous.”


• “witty comparisons,” as when Donne compares
  the bond between these two lovers to an ever-expanding piece of “gold to airy thinness
  beat” (24).

Other poems by Donne illustrate
other “metaphysical” traits cited in Ousby’s volume, but enough traits have already been
discussed here to justify the claim that Donne is indeed a “metaphysical” poet in the
standard senses of that term.

Discuss the features of metaphysical poetry in Donne's poems.

The term “metaphysical poetry” was not a term used by Donne or by his contemporaries when referring to poems by him or other poets of his time.  The term was first used, when referring to Donne, by John Dryden in 1693 when he complained that Donne “affects the Metaphysics . . . in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts.” Later, the great critic Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, wrote that “about the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets,” of whom Donne was the chief.  The term “metaphysical,” then, was used both by Dryden and by Johnson more as a term of disapproval than as a merely descriptive term.

I’ve taken both of these quotations from The Wordsworth Companion to Literature in English, edited by Ian Ousby (1994; originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1988).  Ousby’s volume lists a number of features normally associated with “metaphysical poetry,” many of which can be found, for instance, in Donne’s famous poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.”  Such traits include the following:

• “extravagant conceits” (that is, elaborately sustained comparisons).  For example, in lines 25-36, Donne compares the two lovers to the two “feet” (one pointed, one containing a pencil) of the kind of compasses used to draw perfect circles.


• “far-fetched . . . comparisons.”  For example, in the opening lines of “A Valediction,” Donne compares the leave-taking of two true lovers to the way a soul peacefully leaves the body of a dying virtuous person.


• “wit,” as when Donne says that

Dull sublunary lovers’ love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence . . . (13-15)

In other words, lovers whose love is earthly (“sublunary”) rather than spiritual cannot stand to be physically separated from one another.  Note the witty word-play on “sense” and “Absence.”  Note also the paradoxical wittiness of claiming that something’s “soul is sense” (paradoxical because soul and sensuality are usually considered opposites).

• “combination of dissimilar images,” as when Donne, in stanza three, combines imagery of earthquakes with imagery of movement of the heavenly spheres.


• “a style that is energetic, uneven and vigorous,” as when Donne departs from normal iambic meter (in which odd syllables are unaccented and even syllables are accented) in line 26, which would be scanned as follows “As STIFF TWIN COMpasES are TWO.”  Placing three strongly stressed syllables right next to one another, as Donne does here, was a deliberate choice of a rhythm that could well be described as “energetic, uneven and vigorous.”


• “witty comparisons,” as when Donne compares the bond between these two lovers to an ever-expanding piece of “gold to airy thinness beat” (24).

Other poems by Donne illustrate other “metaphysical” traits cited in Ousby’s volume, but enough traits have already been discussed here to justify the claim that Donne is indeed a “metaphysical” poet in the standard senses of that term.

In "The Seafarer," the poet names “Fate’s three threats." What are they?

The Seafarer, found in the Exeter Book and probably composed around 725 CE, is about the seafarer's voluntary exile on the sea, his sufferings, a belief in a Christian God, and his sense of loss when he considers the pre-Christian world:

All that old life has fled/the celebrations are done--/the weak people now reside/and control the world. . . .Glory has flown,/the nobles of this life/grow old and dry. . . . (ll. 86a-89b)

In this section of the poem, exhibiting the ubi sunt (Latin for where is) motif, the seafarer laments the passing of the older, pagan, world, and his reflection on this loss is often seen as conflicting with the explicitly Christian sentiments that close the poem.  When he speaks of "weak people," he refers to those who are not warriors, those who now plow the earth and are not part of the pre-Christian warrior society that has passed away.

A few lines earlier, just after the seafarer refers to "the joys of the Lord" (l. 65a), he again reverts to a pagan belief system in which fate, not God, determines the length of man's life:

Always and invariably,/one of three things/will create uncertainty/before [man's] fated hour:/disease, or old age,/or the sword's hatred/will tear out life/from those doomed to die. (ll. 68a-71b)

The important words here are uncertainty and warfare, which sum up the Anglo-Saxon view of life: death may come before one's fated time by sickness, age, or warfare, and there is no way, in a pagan belief system, to prepare for that end.  Warfare is included here because warfare is not only a constant element in Anglo-Saxon (Scandinavian) life but also, after disease, the most common way to die.   Life in Anglo-Saxon times was, as Thomas Hobbes said about life in the 17thC., "nasty, brutish, and short."  Even those who are tempted to see The Seafarer as primarily a Christian poem acknowledge that lines like these--which refer to the role of fate and doom--hark back to the seafarer's pagan belief system.  More important, though, is the seafarer's articulation of life (and death) in the Anglo-Saxon world, which reduces itself to death by sickness, age, and warfare.    

The seafarer certainly ends the poem with his belief in a Christian afterlife, but his firm belief in, and many references to, the power of fate is a reflection of his pre-Christian world, a very common motif in Anglo-Saxon poetry, including its greatest poem, Beowulf.

In "Life of Pi", why does Pi dislike agnostics more than atheists?

Pi feels that agnostics are weak, inable to move forward in life and have conviction.  He believes that doubt should exist, but should be momentary, to be replaced by a decision.  Atheists have belief, and have made a specific choice about what to believe.  Agnostics, if they remain so, never will.  Here is the quote from the book that covers it:

I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

What are the themes in chapter 9 of "To Kill a Mockingbird"?

The theme of social realism is the dominant theme in this chapter. The complicated workings of family is shown with Scout's interactions with members of her family. The differing reactions on the issues of prejudice are show, as well. Francis, Scout's cousin, has an angered reaction to Atticus taking Tom Robinson's case, and Scout has an argument with him over it. Scout also gets into a fistfight over the issue at school, and gets spanked by Uncle Jack. Aunt Alexandra and Uncle Jack try to stress to her the importance of being a lady.

All of the interaction causes Uncle Jack to doubt his need for kids and family. This chapter shows the complicated workings that exist within a family. Atticus's decision affects everyone in the family, and they all have something to say about it.

The theme of prejudice is also apparent in the chapter. Atticus's controversial decision to defend a black man accused of attacking a white woman causes an uproar in the town.