The setting of this story is almost a character itself. How and why?

In The Things They Carried, the country of Vietnam literally swallows men alive: the shit field takes Kiowa and forever haunts Alpha Company.  In other instances, men and women literally ingest the country (they drink the water), and this act of communion transforms and indoctrinates them into the horrors of jungle warfare.

In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," O'Brien calls it "the habits of the bush" (98). It is Mary Anne's physical environment (the country itself) which erodes her femininity and equalizes her gender. Her baptism in the river is the catalyst for Mary Anne's adaptation from innocent female into war-like male. Mary Anne survives swimming in the Song Tra Bong, whereas the innocent soldier, Kiowa, is swallowed by it. Morty Phillips swallows a mouthful of it and dies, and Bowker, the professional soldier, kills himself because of its stench. The Song Tra Bong is both a rite of passage and a sirens' song, and once baptized by it, one longs to return to it (to bury Kiowa's moccasins) and be tortured by it (Bowker's suicide). And lest we not forget that O'Brien could have been saved from the whole Vietnam experience by a swim across a different river.

After her swim, Mary Anne refuses to wear make-up, jewelry, or filed nails. She cuts her hair short and wraps it in a green bandana. After “hygiene became a matter of small consequence" she follows the "natural progression of learning how to use a weapon" (98). Her body too prepares for combat; her tall, big-boned frame and long legs "seemed foreign somehow"..."too stiff in places, too firm where the softness use to be" (99). In effect, Mary Anne becomes sick, like Morty Phillips, because she "swallowed bad water on that swim...[s]wallowed a VC virus or something" (195). That something is the essence of the country, ma: the spirit of war, the staple rice seedling, the ghosts of Vietnam, and the graves marked by a thousand years of rebellion.

Why is the action fast-paced in Act 2 of The Taming of the Shrew?

The simplest answer to your question is that quick action, a fast pace, is a key component in a Comedy.  It is the potential mix-ups, mistaken identities, and fast, witty banter that make a Comedy funny.  Shakespeare makes this even more possible in Act II, by having it be one long scene without break.

Act Two seals the engagements of both Kate (to Petruchio) and Bianca (to Lucentio...though it is Tranio pretending to be Lucentio who "wins" her hand.  Meanwhile, Bianca has fallen in love with the right Lucentio, disguised as Cambio.)  And these events happen quickly because, as the audience, we aren't meant to sit and ponder the logic of the events, just enjoy the speed and chaos that swirls about, complicating the action.

This makes the happy ending of the play and the marriages that ensue, all the more fun.  When all the knots and comic entanglements have been unravelled, the audience is as relieved as the characters at the tranquil "happy" ending.

Please give an example of figurative language used in The Time Machine.

There are of course a number of different examples that you could cite. My own favourite comes at the very end of the story, in the Epilogue, when the narrator considers the import of the Time Traveller's story and what the truth of it would mean to humanity. Having narrated quite a hopeless tale of the fate of humans, and how the quest to make life easy and comfortable has ironically lowered the human spirit, the narrator now contemplates the future in quite a hopeless fashion. Note the metaphor that he uses to describe the future:

But to me the future is still black and blank--is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers--shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle--to witness that even when mind and strength have gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

The future, then, to the narrator is "a vast ignorance," with only the memory of the Time Traveller's tale to give it occasional light. Interestingly, the two flowers that Weena gave the Time Traveller are used as symbols of hope and how, no matter how much man changes, there will always be some element of gratitude and tenderness in him.

How do I go about getting a restoration of rights?What im trying to do;I am trying to own a gun legally. I am not a convicted felon.Never been...

In response to the first answer - a "local magistrate" likely would not know the answer to your question.  Here in North Carolina, local magistrates are typically low-level judges and many of them do not even have law degrees.  Even those who do are not going to be able to file an action (some sort of proceding) for you in order to get you what you want.

You would be better served by talking to an attorney.  An attorney would either a). file a declaratory action - which would seek an order by the court allowing you to purchase and own a gun,  or b). find something in the state's statutes that allow you to get a waiver to purchase a gun.

If you are seeking to avoid an attorney, you need to find the general statute that controls gun licensure in your area.  Find out what the statutes say and how you can get a waiver of your issue.  You could find this by googling your state's name, gun laws, and statutes.  There is a possiblity too that your state has adopted the federal laws on this issue.  If so, follow the link below and use the "general search" box in the middle of the page.

An attorney would not cost very much for this kind of advice (or if you know one personally you could perhaps get this information for free).  Honestly, it would be the most expeditious.

contextual clues lead us to assume that the operation that the American refers to is-what? in the story Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

One of the most telling clues that the operation is an abortion comes toward the end when the man says,

"You've got to realize that I don't want you to do it if you don't want to.  I'm perfectly willing to go through with it [the pregnancy] if it means anything to you."

And later he says,

"But I don't want anybody but you.  I don't want any one else.  And I know it's perfectly simple."

The setting itself also gives clues that the couple is talking about a decision between productivity and barreness.  On one side of the train station are fields of grain,trees, and water; on the other side, the valley is dry and barren.  It is the dry side of the valley that the girl contemplates in the end, symbolizing the couple's decision to have the abortion so that things could be like they were before, as the man so claims.

What is Romeo's first reaction when the friar tells him of his sentence and why does Romeo's reaction change later in the scene?act III, scene III

Romeo's first reaction when Friar Lawrence tells him he is getting banished is basically to throw a tantrum.  He moans and groans about how horrible a fate this is and he talks about killing himself.  But then the Friar gets him to snap out of it.

Romeo's reaction changes because of the Friar's plan.  The Friar says that he will try to get the two families to make up with each other.  He will tell them that Romeo and Juliet have secretly gotten married.  He hopes that the prince will forgive Romeo and Romeo will then be able to come home and be with Juliet.

What factors brought about the development of an American middle class in the early nineteenth century?

To me, the more important factor in this development was the creation of a transportation infrastructure in the United States.

Before the early 1800s, there was very little infrastructure that allowed inland transportation within the US.  This made it so that it was very difficult to get goods from one place to another.  Therefore, the US was really split into a bunch of little markets -- people from one could not really sell their goods in another because of lack of transportation.

Because of this, most people were subsistence farmers who grew what they needed plus a bit that they could trade with people in the vicinity.  Once transportation became available, trade became possible.  This made it so that more people could stop farming and move to towns.  They could be supplied by farm products that could be moved longer distances and they could produce goods that could be sold over longer distances.

This does not really contradict the first answer.  Instead, I am saying that the increase in transportation allowed the Industrial Revolution mentioned in that answer to occur.