Literary analysis of the theme nature versus nurture in the novel Frankenstein.

The Creature in Shelley's
Frankenstein is not nurtured and, thus, becomes a
Monster. 

Victor rejects his creation immediately due to
the Creature's appearance.  His rejection is due to the superficial.  The creature, left
alone to progress on his own, becomes hideous.  This is what becomes of natural
man. 

Contrast this, for instance, with Elizabeth.  She,
too, is orphaned (as the Creature is, for all practical purposes), but she is accepted
and loved and taken care of.  And she becomes an almost ideal
person. 

Victor bears responsibility for the Creature
becoming a Monster, because he fails to nurture his creation. 

How does Tom try to get out of his bargain?

In his tale "The Devil and Tom Walker," Washington Irving wryly narrates,

As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next.

Having made a pact with the Devil and been the cruelest of usurers under the directions of "Old Scratch," Tom begins to worry about the proverbial Day of Reckoning when he dies. So, he becomes "a violent churchgoer"; that is, he prays vociferously as though heaven can be taken by his very lung power. He is "rigid" in both religious and monetary matters; now a fundamentalist, he criticizes his neighbors, believing that every one of their sins which he exposes will "credit on his own side." In fanatical fashion, he castigates Quakers and Anabaptists, urging their persecution. Nevertheless, Tom still dreads payment to the Devil; so, he begins to carry a Bible with him at all times and assures that customers observe his reading when they come in for loans to his office.

Irving humorously includes this passage, also:

Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained...and that fancying his end approaching, he had his horse newly shod, saddled, and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down, in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting.

But, he discounts it as a "old wives' fable, narrating that this precaution of Tom's is superfluous because he calls out his own fate when, having lost "patience and piety," he tells a speculator that he has made too much money off him, "The Devil take me...if I have made a farthing!" At this moment a "black man ...holding a black horse" appears and says, "Tom, you're come for."

In The Canterbury Tales, what are the morals and themes of "The Friar's Tale"?

The Friar's tale is about a summoner, or a person who exposes sinners, who indulges his greed by extorting money from those he catches, letting them go if they will pay him what he asks. 

The theme of the tale is the close interconnection between greed and the devil.  The moral is that those who engage in extortion and greed will soon find themselves in hell.

Actors offer generalizations about the nature and predicament of women. Should the audience take as serious assessments all, some, or none of these?

Something, too, we have to remember is that Jason makes assumptions about "Greek" women, of which Medea is not. In fact, after Medea kills his boys, he states that a Greek woman would never do such a thing. He is prone to make generalizations about the women of his society (dangerous) and then apply them to Medea (fatal).

Also, remember about Medea's famous speech: we shoud take it seriously, but as sagetrieb points out above, that speech is for the benefit of the chorus -- to get them on her side. Remember that Medea has a history of manipulating women, particularly Pelias' daughters.

Part of the wrong she is trying to right is the patriarchial society that produces men like Jason.

How does the concept of time figure into The Great Gatsby?This is a question for my english class that I'm stuck on. Any ideas?

In The Great Gatsby, time is a
leitmotif that runs throughout the novel.  It is mainly associated with Gatsby and his
quest to repeat the past and reestablish his love affair with
Daisy.

Observe this passage on page 110 regarding
Daisy:

"I
wouldn’t ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can’t repeat the
past."
"Can’t repeat the past?" he cried
incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
He looked
around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his
house, just out of reach of his hand.

"I’m
going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly.
"She’ll see."

Gatsby's goal
is the turn back time, to go back to his boyish days in Louisville when he first met
Daisy, before the war, before she was married, before he became corrupted, back when
America was the idealistic land of opportunity.

Daisy knows
that the past cannot repeat itself.  Nick knows this too.  But, when Gatsby and Daisy
meet at Nick's for the date, Gatsby thinks time is moving backwards.  Observe the
symbolism of the clock:

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Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was
reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of
boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a
defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his
distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful, on the
edge of a stiff chair.

“We've met before,” muttered Gatsby.
His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a
laugh. Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his
head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in
place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his
hand.

“I'm sorry about the
clock,” he said.

My own face had now assumed
a deep tropical burn. I couldn't muster up a single commonplace out of the thousand in
my head.

“It's an old clock,” I told them
idiotically.

I think we all believed for a moment that it
had smashed in pieces on the floor.
(86-87)

Overall, the
leitmotif of time shows the false idealism of Gatsby and the American dream.  After
World War I, Fitzgerald says that the innocent, young, boyish America of our past and of
our dreams is changed, corrupted, and no more.

What is the symbolic significance of the old man and his enormous wings? Since he’s called an "angel", is there a religious significance to his...

The center of this story is the dark side of human behavior - hypocrisy, greed, fear and paranoia.  The old man represents humanity, but his wings suggest that he has escaped, flown above the crowd.  He is an old man instead of a young man because the elderly should be respected for their wisdom - but as is often the case - they are often shunted aside by the selfish young.  His wings also connect him to innocence and spirituality because a man with wings is often intrepreted to be an angel.  And he is innocent, having done nothing to harm the people of the community.  However, the fact that his wings are in such bad shape suggest that he is fallen, and thus the spirituality of the people has fallen. 

By being a fresh and blood angel, he shows the good and bad of humanity.  When the old man arrives, Elisenda and Pelayo plan to kill him, but Pelayo doesn't have the heart for it.  He shows compassion.  But he does lock the man up and his wife does plot to make money off the deal.  They benefit from the man but do not appreciate his presence.  However, their child is the only one who appears to treat the man well.  Good and bad, a contradiction - just like they oxymoron of his appearance.

What does Jem mean when he says "it's like bein a caterpillar in a cocoon"? (Chapter 22) I did not really understand the answer for this question...

It seems as though Jem is referring both to himself and to Maycomb. The trial has shaken him out of his youthful innocence and naive belief that "Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that’s what they seemed like." In this sense, he himself was the caterpillar in the cocoon, safe and sheltered from harsh outside realities. He thought Maycomb's people were the "best folks in the world" but of course he himself hadn't experienced people anywhere else in the world, as yet.

But maybe the caterpillar image could apply to Maycomb itself, too. It really is a small, sleepy, unremarkable little town which is closed unto itself, without much knowledge or interest in what goes on in big cities and the world at large. Generally life goes on in an even, untroubled way. However, Tom's trial, as an example of social injustice and prejudice, has shaken things up and called Maycomb's stalwart good people, like Atticus, to action. This is underlined by Miss Maudie's reply to Jem:

We're the safest folks in the world .... We're so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are we've got men like Atticus to go for us.