What are some of Patty's characteristics in Summer of my German Soldier?

In Summer of My German Soldier, the protagonist is a young girl by the name of Patty, who can best be described, above all else, as lonely. She is from a wealthy Jewish family, but she is viewed by them--and others-- in many ways to be an outcast and a failure, which only adds to her feelings of lonliness and frustration. Throughout the novel she deals with many of the typical feelings of teenage girls, but due to her actions of harboring a German POW, her problems are on a much larger and life altering scale than most.  She feels horribly isolated and bored and is only able to escape by retreating into a world of her own made up of make-believe, exaggeration, and lies.  In the end she is left with pretty much the same characteristics and lots of trouble, but the novel comes to an end before the reader is able to observe any real changes in Patty's character.  Brenda

"Most of the main characters in The Great Gatsby are involved in delusion, deception & self deception." How valid is this statement?

To treat this statement about The Great
Gatsby, simply take one character at a time and see if he/she suffers from
illusions or practices deception.  I'm not sure I would worry too much, especially while
your gathering evidence, about the "perceptions" part.  That should come clear later,
after you've gathered evidence, but even if it doesn't, figuring the illusions of and
deception by the characters is most of what you're looking
for.

For instance, Gatsby suffers from the illusion that
Daisy loves him as much as and in the same way that he loves her.  She doesn't.  This is
a beautiful illusion, but it is still an illusion.  Gatsby dedicates five hears of his
life trying to recapture a past, that in reality, never existed in the first place.  He
suffers from illusion and self-deception.  He tells Nick that, of course, one can
capture the past.  But, of course, one cannot, especially when that past never even
existed.  Gatsby's relationship with Daisy from the past is Gatsby's reality.  But it's
a faulty reality.

Nick is another example:  he deceives the
reader, beginning his story with an anecdote (his father teaching him) that demonstrates
the fact that he doesn't judge people.  But he does judge people.  This is deception. 
Reality to Nick, his perception, is his honest character and his objective nature.  But
these, too, are illusions.  He is certainly not
objective.

Tom and Daisy also have illusions and practice
deceptions.  I'll leave those two to you. 

What is the theme of "Shopping" by Joyce Carol Oates?

"Shopping" highlights relationships between mother and
daughter, and demonstrates how such relationships may be deeply strained, even when the
mother and daughter are on a shopping excursion at the mall—a characteristically
American activity. Reading the story is both interesting to both sexes. Women will be
naturally interested in the two women, and the men are not so far away from family life
that they will not also be interested in the alienation that the story illustrates. This
story by Joyce Carol Oates highlights the unique bonds that a parent-child relationship
contains, and though similar to other works of literature, this contemporary setting
modernizes the ages old problems in dealing with children from a parent's
perspective. 

Please give information about the Victorian features of Tennyson and Robert Browning.Are Tennyson and Robert Browning related to Romantic poetry...

Tennyson and Browning are Victorian period poets. title="The Victorian Age. Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition at Infoplease.com"
href="http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/ent/A0858005.html">Victorianism differs
from href="http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html">Romanticism
in dramatic ways. For instance, Romanticism presented an idealized view of nature and of
the joys of simple rural living. Even when death and suffering were the topic, as in
Wordsworth's "The Ruined Cottage," it is presented in an embellished, idealized way with
suffering on a transcended moral plane. For Victorians, nature became a cold hard
reality; Tennyson even refers to nature’s bloodied
claws.

Another instance of differences is that in the
Romantic period, society was feeling the expansiveness of a rising industrial based
middle class and the poetry of the Romantics reflected this expansive feeling, with a
focus on individualism and self. By the Victorian period, society was feeling the crush
of the reality of an industrialized urban culture with the division between the wealthy
and impoverished growing wider and cities becoming overburdened with laborers coming
from the farm to make a living. This urban reduced the moral oversight provided by small
communities and close relationships, so poverty, violence and immorality of all kinds
grew at astounding rates, triggering the emphasis on Victorian moral purity and some
prevalent topics in Victorian poetry.

This, coupled with
the discoveries and theories in science, which added to the further weakening of
Christian belief, led Victorian poetry down the path of realism and protest, whereas
Romantic poetry was that of idealization and celebration of expansiveness. Within this
spirit, the Victorians favored the influence of Medieval and Baroque poets, along with
classical poets like Virgil, while Romantics had favored the Renaissance and classical
Greeks like Aristotle.

Tennyson displayed these Victorian
qualities in his writing. Although at times he chose topics that might harmonize with
Romantic period sensibilities, as with “Ulysses,” he more often chose topics protesting
contemporary life and explored society’s psychological aspects, as in “Mariana,” and
that presented moral themes, like the moral theme of the role of woman in “The Lady of
Shalott.” Some of his pressing social concerns were the role and treatment of children
and women and politics; he advocated higher education for women and spoke out on issues
like the Crimean War.

Tennyson had strong Christian
religious beliefs and was personally and philosophically dismayed over the sciences of
evolution, geography and such that were seeming to contradict a literal meaning for the
Judeo-Christian idea of Creation as found in the Bible. His poetry explored the meaning
and import of sciences to Christian faith, concluding that there was no need for a loss
of faith, which comforted his Christian readers.

Robert
Browning displayed Victorian qualities in his writing in that he explored the cognition
and psychology behind some of the moral questions of the day, e.g., “Porphyria’s Lover”
explores the cognition of a madman (consciousness) and the psychology of power and
dominance. Browning is noted for his use of dramatic monologue, differing from a
soliloquy by the presence of a listener in the text, while the soliloquy is the private
musings of a character alone in the text.

Browning’s
explorations of social topics--using violence and immorality as in society--including
scientific and religious topics, raise more questions than they answer, like about art
and morality. Browning builds a link from the Victorians to the upcoming Modernist poets
like T. S. Elliot, thus he is considered a “protomodernist,” anticipating future major
developments.

Define the symbols used in "The Waste Land".

Your question requires several books to answer it!  In fact, the poem is so complex in its symbolism that Eliot included his own footnotes to guide the reader. I will address the title of the poem, which refers to the world after WWI.  The narrator uses symbols of water and lack of it to show the infertility of our culture, wasted by a lack of love and giving. Eliot's footnote credits Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance as his source and inspiration for the overarching symbolic structure of the poem. Weston explains that the original Wasteland was part of the legend associated with the Quest of the Holy Grail found in Arthurian legend. Within the Quest for the Holy Grail is an ancient fertility myth having to do with the Fisher King whose death, sickness, or impotence brought about infertility of the land.  Note all the images of dryness and death in the opening section:  dead land, dull roots, winter, dried tubers, stony rubbish, broken images, dead tree, dry stone, and the repetition of rock are but a few examples. These pertain to the larger "death" of culture brought about and signified by the war.

Why doesn't the author give Curley's wife a name?

Steinbeck was planning to adapt his novella into a stage play at the time he was working on the book manuscript. He collaborated on the stage version with playwright George Kaufman, and it was produced with great success in New York in 1937, the same year the book came out. This explains why the novella has some of the same characteristics as a play. Although it is a story about agriculture and the lives of farm workers, the settings are few and are all indoors, except for the opening scene by the river and the closing scene in the same location. The main set is the bunkhouse. Another important set is the barn where Lennie kills Curley's wife. Anything that happens outside on the ranch happens offstages and is represented with sound effects, such as horses stomping and horseshoes ringing. It is obvious that Steinbeck was visualizing his play while he was writing his novella.

It can be observed that the characters are frequently introducing themselves to others or introducing other characters to each other. They also call each other by name more frequently than would normally happen in such a milieu. This name-calling is common in stage plays, especially in the opening scenes, and it usually seems awkward and artificial. In Of Mice and Men is for the benefit of the reader and for the future theater audience; and it is especially important because the characters in Steinbeck's story are all men, all farm workers, and all dressed in work clothes--with one exception.

The only exception is the one female character who is only referred to as "Curley's wife." This character isn't given a name because she doesn't need one in order to be identified or distinguished from the other characters. No doubt Steinbeck was annoyed by the tedious business of making up names and having all the men pointedly and repeatedly calling each other by these names. He even has Slim and Candy commenting on Lennie's last name of Small, which is supposedly funny because Lennie is so big.

Steinbeck tries to differentiate the male characters. Lennie is big and George is small. Lennie is dumb and George is smart. Curley is small and hostile. Slim is tall. Crooks stands out because he is the only black man on the ranch. Candy has lost one hand and is handicapped in his actions. Candy is a friendly and kindly man, while Carlson is cold and mean. But they still have to have names, and the names have to be repeated so that the reader--and especially the future theater audience--will remember them when they are offstage but are being referred to onstage. This differentiation of characters must have been one of Steinbeck's biggest concerns, and he was probably quite happy not to have to think up yet another name for Curley's wife.

Why was it important for The Receiver of Memory to have the Capacity to See Beyond?it's somewhere between chapters 12-13I think The Receiver of...

I have been pondering this question all day. I have looked at different studies and the story and know the answer; however, it is very difficult to put into words. Let's give it a try, it is important for the Receiver of Memory to have the capacity to see beyond because, in order to do this very difficult job the Receiver must be able to understand what he or she is feeling. From the text, we know that understanding feelings is not something that Community members are accustomed to; in fact, this is the very reason for having the Giver in the first place, to take all the bad memories that they can't handle away. Jonas and the Giver both possess the capacity to understand more than what is seen or understood by members of the Community. For example, the references to color and the inability to see the brightness and experience the happiness it brings demonstrates, on a small scale, the difference between the Receivers and the citizens. Without the ability to see beyond, the Receivers are no more gifted than the other citizens of the Community; I think seeing beyond is another way of saying that they understand the feelings, which is a mandatory part of the position. I'm not sure if this helped at all, but there it is.