Explain this quote from "1984", "orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

To understand this phrase try reversing it....

"Thinking is unorthodox." In other words, the dictatorship in 1984 does not want you to think for yourself or question anything. To be a good citizen your mind should be empty. If your mind is empty, you are no risk to the authorities.

To an extent, all governments do this, they do not want you to ask difficult questions like "Why are we killing people in Iraq?", they just want you to say, "Hooray! Hooray! Are soldiers are very brave and always fight for Freedom. Hooray for us!" They don't want you to think unconventional thoughts. Especially that most dangerous word, 'Why'. With levers such as Patriotism and Religion they define what is acceptable and call you unAmerican or unChristian if you step outside those lines. 

They want you to think what they want you to think.

In 1984 this is even more extreme.

In "Lord of the Flies," how do the boys come to be on the island?

The scene at the very beginning of the book is during one of the world wars. As a bunch of British school children were flying on an airplane in order to escape the warefare their plane was shot down. I believe that it tore the plane in half, sending one part into the ocean and one onto the island since if you read the details only part of the plane was there.

In the book Frankenstein By Mary Shelley, Why didnt Safie's father want her to marry Felix?

You would think that Safie's father would have been happy
to have her marry Felix De Lacey.  After all, Felix has been very good to him.  He is
helping Safie's father escape from France after he has been convicted and sentenced.  In
addition, Safie seems to be very much in love with him.  Finally, Felix is a high status
man with lots of money.

But there is a problem.  Safie's
father is a Muslim.  He is very strongly opposed to the idea of his daughter marrying a
Christian instead of a Muslim.

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He loathed the idea that his daughter should be
united to a Christian

Because
of this, he decides against letting her marry Felix.

What is the function of the "drummer," the traveling salesman in Part II of "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky?"

This minor flat character is used for both humour and detachment. His interruption upon the scene also precognizes an upcoming crisis as a sort of Greek chorus, Western style. It's the drum roll which builds suspense before the actual act is played out.

This character also helps maintain the lighthearted tone of the story. As this personna, the reader also observes without being emotionally caught up in an eventual small town shoot-out; he is, as the drummer, just "passing through:"

Crane is a deadpan satirist and mimic, prone to using cliches, stereotypes, and familiarities of plot episodes to spin out his yarns.

This tongue-in-cheek humour, use of "prefabricated" personae and emotional distancing could be considered in part the Crane trademark. The reader is not to take him too seriously, at least in his lighter works, but there is nevertheless a message lurking closely behind.

In the Great Gatsby,what is the color of the inside of Gatsby's car?

Color symbolism is exteremely important in this novel. I
strongly urge anyone to consult the University of Michigan's Online Dictionary of
Symbolism and look up the various colors Fitzgerald uses, namely yellow, green, white,
blue, gold, and silver. Remember that any given color may have multiple suggestive
meanings depending on culture and context. For example, white usually suggests innocence
and purity. White is clearly associated with Daisy, but she is hardly innocent. Instead,
white for Daisy suggests transparency. She is so shallow that we can see right through
her. In the case of the car, the yellow exterior suggests decay and corruption [note the
rims of T.J. Eckleberg's glasses are also yellow]. The green interior suggests money (of
course--it is a Rolls Royce!)as well as hope and innocence. In combining these two
colors, Fitzgerald is suggesting that hope and innocence (associated with the West in
TGG) are often corrupted by greed and loss of hope. The car, then, is sort of objective
correllative for Gatsby himself. Invariably, I get at least one student who questions
how much of these things an author "intends." Fair enough. I usually answer by saying
that writers have choices. He could have made it any color he wanted, but he chose these
for very specific reasons. If the color symbolism conveniently reflects the themes in
the novel--so be it.

Waiting for Godot is also about the emptiness of the modern world that does not know that it is empty. Do you agree with the statement? Discuss.

I can see how this statement applies. Although Beckett
himself famously stated of his work, "no symbols where none intended," it is almost
impossible not to see symbolism in what he has written. Like "Endgame" the play revolves
around two main characters who ate somehow isolated, stuck in a repetitive pattern,
unable to make a move to do anything differently. Vladimir and Estragon are waiting,
ostensibly for "Godot" - but who they are waiting for is not as important as the fact
that they are waiting foe someone (or something) that they have never seen before but
that they anticipate will arrive. They will not act until that moment occurs, so they
are doomed to repeat the same process over and over
again.

Where I see a clear parallel here to the modern
world is that we, as a society, often repeat the same actions without giving any though
to what they mean. We do what we are "supposed" to do according to our society, but as
was a major theme of the modernist period in literature, we do not know for certain why
we do those things. The world has lost its sense of meaning just as it has lost its
humanity. We are obsessed with the idea of "progress" yet we do not know what that
really means. At the same time, we suffer from an inability to act. We wait =until we
are told what to do, we never step outside of the accepted and expected norms. We
stagnate and we lack an internal driving force to break free from that stagnation - in
this sense, the world is empty, disillusioned, and devoid of
purpose.

What symbolism is used in Shakespeare's "Sonnet #4"?

This poem is urging a young man to marry and produce offspring.  The reason the speaker gives to the man is that because the man has been given such a gift of beauty by nature, he owes it to nature to pass it on.

Shakespeare uses the metaphor of a financial gift or inheritance to symbolize the "gift" of beauty that has been given by nature.  This symbol is first established in the second line with the word "legacy."  The speaker asks the man why he only "spends" this "legacy" upon himself - in other words, why doesn't the man share his beauty?  In the next line, Shakespeare refers to the beauty as "Nature's bequest", and in line 6, the beauty is "bounteous largesse."

After using the metaphor to reinforce that the beauty has been a gift for nature, the speaker then turns the symbol upon his speaker, asking what "audit" the speaker can give in return for the gift?  The only answer, of course, is for the speaker to have children and continue the gift he has been given.