Notes

Historians do not know for certain that Alexander the Great was murdered.  However, there are two main accounts of his death and both stories indicate that he could have been assassinated with poison. One account is by Plutarch.  In this story, Alexander the Great was visited by an admiral.  He drank with the admiral and a close friend throughout the evening and into the next day.  Shortly after, he developed a fever before becoming extremely ill.  He died after his illness. Another story tells that Alexander the Great drank a large amount of wine and began to feel sick.  He then became weak and suffered from pain before dying.  In both stories, he became ill after drinking.  It is possible that someone could have poisoned his drink. Assassination was common in Alexander the Great's time.  Modern theories suggest that he died from typhoid fever, or possibly liver disease due to heavy drinking.

Although most people alive today think of the United States as a major world power, historically, both the United States and Canada were colonized by Europeans. Thus, when we think of contemporary literatures in England and the United States, we are considering cultures that were shaped by different experiences, despite their sharing a common language.  English literature is essentially colonial and European, reflecting a long continuous history as an imperial power. England, however, is no longer the great imperial power it was in the nineteenth century and much English literary reflection is devoted to the question of whether England should in response to this emphasize her own Englishness, retreating from internationalism, as advocated by Philip Larkin, or whether it should it embrace international postmodernism, either of a European or American flavor. The literature of the United States, on the other hand, reflects a postcolonial experience. First, it attempted to imitate the Euro...

This line employs several different literary techniques.  On the surface it is personification , since the frost is given the human-like quality of "lurking," suggesting that it is waiting for a chance to ambush someone.  It hides beneath the earth, hoping for the opportunity to cause some havoc, hardening the mud to lumpy ruts or to "show on the water its crystal teeth." When it does come out of hiding, it turns the firm ground to a muddy mess. Frost is also using a rhetorical device here called hyperbation , which occurs when words appear in an unexpected pattern.  Typically, we place prepositions before their objects, so we would expect the line to read, "beneath the earth." Instead Frost creatively pens it "in the earth beneath," flipping the word order, which emphasizes this unique image and causes us to pause, considering and envisioning the earth on this April day.

In many respects, the genders are more equal now than at any point in U.S. history. Although there is still a wage gap between men and women, it is lower now than ever; women's earnings were 58-60% of men's earnings throughout the 1960s, but today the average woman earns 79.6% of what the average man earns. Job segregation has decreased, and although female-dominated professions still earn significantly less than majority-male fields, there are more women doing jobs once dominated by men (and vice versa) than ever. In 2016, women held about 19% of seats in Congress, an institution that included no women at all between 1922 and 1931. In 2016, the Democratic Party nominated Hillary Clinton- the first female presidential nominee in a major party in U.S. history. It is impossible to know the future, but U.S. society throughout history has moved towards becoming more equal, and if this continues eventually the genders will reach full equality. Complete equality would consist of equa...

The Root Test says that this limit will converge if and only if the following limit (actually limit superior) is less than 1: `C = lim_{n rightarrow infty} |(n!)^n/(n^n)^2|^(1/n)` This is actually a fairly simple limit to get: `C = lim_(n->oo) |{n!}/n^2| = infty` since `n! > n^2` for `n>=4` The limit diverges, so the sum also diverges.

I believe the lottery in this story is taking place in a small town in the northeast United States. Some of this is based on explicit statements, like the way Jackson calls the place a "village." This refers to small settlements. Some of this is based on the names of the characters in the story. The names are either English (Summers, Graves) or French (Delacroix) in origin. This fits the New England area. Some, like Hutchinson, were actual names from Puritan history. New England is one of the few places in the United States where historical traditions are well enough established to support a ritual like the lottery, which is old enough to have sayings and superstitions about it. Based on the outcome of this story, I believe Jackson is saying people can follow social pressure and established traditions too far--that they are willing to kill or die to follow them.

Tensions between the mother country and the American colonies worsened in the period after 1763, which marked the end of the French-Indian War and marked a British shift away from the British policy of salutary neglect.  The colonists did not feel that Parliament represented their best interests and they felt that they should not have to pay what they considered to be an excessive amount of British taxes.  The colonists also resented the British limiting them to the area east of the Appalachian mountains with the Proclamation Line of 1763; the colonists did not feel as though the Native Americans should be rewarded for their contribution to the British war effort.  The colonists also resented the tax collectors and military presence in the colonies. British officials did not trust the colonists either.  To them, the colonists were scofflaws who did not want to pay their fair share of taxes--after all, the colonists were direct beneficiaries of the redcoat presence in the Americas.  The...