How is weather/season related to the action? If Gurov/Anna's affair heats up in Yalta's hot sun, why doesn't it cool down, in Moscow winter's snow?

Author's often use weather or seasons to symbolize the dominant themes of their work.  It is often the case that a passionate relationship will fade over time, and what seemed exciting and new at first becomes commonplace.  Thats the cooling off.  Either the couple will continue to find new things to enjoy about one another, or they will separate.  However, if the separation is forced, as it was here, it is easy to forget that feeling of familiarity and to be excited again when reunited.  The weather symbolizes the two stages most literally.  Hot for the passion, cold for the lack of continuing interest beyond the excitement and lust.

The Puritans also relied on their consciences. Show an exact quote from Act 1 showing this.Please include the page number and state which cover...

Hale also acts on his conscience.  Although he is called to Salem to look for witches, he really requires evidence of witchcraft, not just the words of the girls.  In Act I scene II he goes to the Proctor's house not because the court sent him but  "of my own, without the court's authority, "  to speak with Elizabeth because she has been mentioned in the court.  He continues: 

I am a stranger here, as you know.  And in my ignorance I find it hard to draw a clear opinion of them that come accused before the court.  And so this afternoon, and now tonight, I go from house to house... "

Here Hale shows his concern that he really know the people who are accused and he shows his conscience in desiring that knowledge.  Later, coming to the conlcusion that the court is only interested in hanging witches rather than in finding the truth, Hale denounces the trial and leaves coming back only to try and save the lives of the accused.

What does this quote from Hamlet's letter to Ophelia mean: "Doubt thou that stars..."?

The following lines are from the love letter Hamlet writes to Ophelia in Act 2 Scene 2 of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. As a dutiful daughter, Ophelia passes this letter to her father Polonius who then reads it to the King and the Queen.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt I love.

It seems that Hamlet has been courting Ophelia who is unable to respond to his feelings because her father Polonius forbids her to do so. Polonius feels that this unrequited love is the reason behind Hamlet’s madness.

The most simplified and obvious interpretation of these lines is Hamlet’s hyperbolic assertion that Ophelia could doubt the most believable scientific phenomena and forces of the universe, but she should never doubt his love towards her.

Of course, the fact that the stars are only made of fire is questionable to astronomical sciences now, but at the time period of the play, it was treated with downright certainty. However, Copernicus challenged the fact of the movement of the sun and most of the Shakespearean audience would have suspected this anyway.

There is a possibility of semantic ambiguity in the poem if Shakespeare used the word "doubt" to mean "suspect". Hamlet's love poem, then, would ask Ophelia to go ahead and suspect all proven forces of the Universe but “never suspect that he loves (her)”.

This, confusingly,  generates complete semantic inversion of Hamlet’s use of language to express his feelings, which sounds more like a denial of love. Was Hamlet telling Ophelia to believe he loves her or to be sure that he doesn't? Is it a poem Hamlet wrote to express his love or to refute it? This ambiguity has garnered a lot of interest amongst literary scholars although Hamlet’s love to Ophelia isn’t the main focus of the play.

Why did the black girl (Connie) tell the guys to beat up Mike? Why does Mike not hate her, or black people for this?

Connie and Mike illustrate opposing reactions to being victimized by others.

Connie harbors a deep bitterness toward white people.  She has been a victim in a prejudicial society all her life, and has just been assaulted by a group of white men. Mike helps her, and there is a glimmer of hope that she might be able to rise above her preconceived ideas and see him as an individual when she thanks him in the car. As soon as she is back with her group, however, it is easy to revert back to mob mentality and conform to peer pressure, so she tells her friends to "kill the white bastard" (Chapter 2).

Mike, on the other hand, though he has just been brutally beaten by a gang of black youths, refuses to succumb to stereotyping and bitterness.  He knows that the gang that attacked him does not represent all black people, and is able to see people as individuals from perspectives other than his own. He is thus even able to understand the motivation behind Connie's betrayal of him, and actually sympathize with her.

Why is Antigone in trouble? Why does Creon believe that the gods are on his side? What was the belief of the Greeks concerning death?What was the...

The Greeks actually had an elaborate funeral ritual.  They believed that the shade (or soul) of the person left the body at the moment of death, but could not go to the underworld, Hades, until the body was properly cared for and buried.  It was usually the job of the nearest female relatives to prepare the body for burial so it should have been the job of Antigone and Ismene.  This fact makes it even more understandable that Antigone would risk all to bury her brother.   

Creon believes the God's are on his side because he believes that Polynieces was wrong.  It is not really Creon that Polynieces fought against; it was Antigone's other brother, Etocles.  Etocles and Polyneices were supposed to share the rule of Thebes after Oedipus, and had agreed to alternate power on a yearly basis, but when the year of Etolces was up, he refused to give over to Polyneices.  Polyneices then got an army from his father-in-law (from another city) and attacked Thebes to gain power from his brother.  Both brothers were killed in the battle and Creon inherited the throne.  Creon feels that Polynieces was wrong to bring an army against Thebes even if he had a rightful grievance.  It was a question of loyalty to one's city over one's family in his eyes.  Antigone disagrees.

What was the year when Leo Tolstoy started and finished War and Peace?

William L. Shirer wrote an interesting book about Tolstoy and his wife Sofya in which Shirer describes the composition of Tolstoy's most famous work, War and Peace. Tolstoy was an extremely fastidious writer. He wrote at least seven drafts of his long novel before submitting it for publication, and he was still making changes when the publisher started sending him proof sheets for approval. Tolstoy of course had to write everything with pen and ink. His handwriting was hard to read, as might be expected in such a temperamental and impetuous man. The only person who could read it was his wife. Without her assistance, the novel might have taken several times as long to complete. The published book is enormous, running in most editions to over 1500 pages. It was of course much larger in manuscript form. Tolstoy wrote the first draft and gave it to Sofya, who made a clean copy in her own neat and attractive handwriting. As she finished each day's copying she would give her pages to her husband, who would begin making corrections, revisions, and additions, creating a total mess of Sofya's work. When she had finished making a complete copy of the first draft, Tolstoy gave her back her bundle of papers with all his changes, and she began making a second complete fair copy in her own handwriting. Here is part of Shirer's description of their collaboration:

Just making clean copies of Tolstoy’s manuscript was a considerable job in itself. Apparently no one else in the house could make out his almost illegible handwriting. And making one clean copy was never enough, for Tolstoy would rewrite it and hand it back to her for copying again. Sonya once said she had copied the novel seven times. Since it runs to 1,453 printed pages in my edition, that means that her fair copy came to at least 3,000 manuscript pages. So she must have written down in her own careful handwriting 21,000 pages. And this does not include countless pages that Tolstoy, as his daughter Tanya noted, threw away.  William L. Shirer, Love and Hatred, p. 69

Few contemporary writers would show such dedication as Tolstoy, and few assistants would display such patience and loyalty as his wife Sofya.

War and Peace looks intimidating because of its length and also because of all the characters with long Russian names. But it is actually not hard to read. It is broken up into short chapters and the chapters are divided into sections. The novel was written by a great genius, so it becomes engrossing and a memorable reading experience. It deals basically with Napoleon's invasion of Russia with 680,000 soldiers in the year 1812. The book has a majestic panoramic sweep, like a giant wave washing across the land and then withdrawing. Napoleon made it all the way to Moscow and then had to turn around and retreat through the snow and ice because of the terrible Russian winter and the fact that much of Moscow was being destroyed by fires. It seems like a foreshadowing of what was to happen to Hitler's mechanized armies in the early 1940s. 

How does Brinker stage a "mock arrest" of gene?

In Chapter 7 of A Separate Peace, Brinker stages a "mock
arrest" of Gene as they go to the Butt Room, a basement area where the boys smoke. 
Seizing Gene's neck, and pusing him into the Butt Room, Brinker
"announces,"

readability="6">

Here's your prisoner, gentlemen...I 'm turning
him over to the proper
authorities.

One of the boys
asks what the charge is, and Brinker replies,

readability="6">

Doing away with his roommate so he could have a
whole room to himself.  Rankest treachery....Practically
fratiricide.

Gene shakes
himself free from Brinker, who tells him he will have his day in court.  Gene then
says,

Shut
up!  I swear you ride a joke longer than anybody I
know.

This statement is a
mistake, Gene narrates becaus the radio suddenly became quiet and his voice rings out,
"galvanizing them all."  One boy asks, "So you killed him, did
you?"

Brinker qualifies his
statement:

readability="8">

Well, not actually killed.  Finny's hangin
between life and death at home, in the arms of his grief-stricken old
mother.

Gene tries to diffuse
the situation by saying he just a "little pinch of arsenic in his morning coffee." 
Brinker will not let Gene out of the situation by declaring "We know the scene of the
crime."  Again Gene tries for humor, using a "funny French pronunciation":  "Yes, huh,
yes there was a small, a little contretemps at the
tree."

When a young boy asks Gene to tell them everything,
there is an "unsettling current in his voice, as though he believed everything," so Gene
gains confidence and continues his fabrication, saying he stole Finny's money, cheated
on his entrance test, blackmailing his parents; then, he made love to his sister....,but
when he can easily slip in the truth and have it disbelieved, Gene's throat closes on
him:  "I could never say them, never.

readability="12">

I swung on the younger boy. 'What did I do
then?' I demanded.  I'll bet yhou've got a lot of theories.  Come on, reconstruct the
crime.....

His eyes sung guiltily back and forth, 'Then,
you just pushed him off, I'll
bet'

After getting the boy to
say the truth that he cannot, Gene has effectively defeated the crowd.  However, as they
go up the stairs one boy remarks,

readability="6">

Funny, he[Finny] came all the way down here and
didn't even have a
smoke.

What begins as a mock
arrest almost becomes a trial for Gene.  In fact, it has for
Phineas.