Who are the heroes in "The Bronze Bow" by Elizabeth George Spears?

The Bronze Bow has some deeply defined characters so the concept of identifying them as heroes seems a little difficult.  If we define "hero" as protagonist, the lead character Danie bar Jamin meets the description.  We see the fact that he is driven by hatred beaten down until he is ready for something new.  Because his character is so well-defined, we see elements that may seem anti-hero, but the more realistic the character development, the more this will always be true.

Joel bar Hezrin may similarly be called a hero; even though his mistakes are obvious, Joel grows and becomes increasingly caring. Leah, sister of Daniel, also emerges with heroic qualities. Thacia is a character who also falls short of all definitions of hero, but can be seen as a hero for women in this ultra-patriarchal society.

Samson is endlessly loyal to Daniel and seems to be unmotivated by anything but good.  (Samson is the mute giant).

The real- life characters of Jesus of Nazareth and Simon the Zealot of course show virtuous and heroic qualities.

If the Oxford Movement describes a period from 1833-1845, why were "Macspaunday" called the four musketeers of the Oxford Movement?"Macspaunday"...

Aside from its geographical focus, the Oxford Group of the 1920s and 1930s shares little in common with the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement.  The Oxford Movement (1833-1845) was an attempt on the part of Roman Catholics to reform the Anglican Church, using the argument that the Church of England was essentially a "catholic" church.  The Oxford Group of early twentieth century, however, refers to the literary movement headed by "Macspaunday," a term that combined the names of its four leading poets:  Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, and Cecil Day Lewis.

Their central role in the Oxford Group resulted in their being called the "four musketeers of the Oxford Group."  The four poets at the heart of the Oxford Group espoused Modernism, particularly ideas connected with T.S. Eliot.  W.H. Auden, widely considered the most important member of the group, received the greatest acclaim.  While still an undergraduate, Stephen Spender published some of his poems, and year later, Auden published Poems with Faber and Faber, of whom T.S. Eliot was the director.  Throughout the 1930s, Auden and the other members of the Oxford Group published volumes of poetry, notable among them being The Orators (1932).  Auden also published The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), a satirical look at England.

While the Oxford Group extended beyond the figures of Auden, MacNeice, Day Lewis, and Spender, including Christopher Isherwood among others, the "four musketeers," especially W.H. Auden, served as the voice of the group.

In Empire of the Sun, what techniques are used to show the fragility of life?

One technique is symbolism. As Jim explores his empty family home, he sees the drained swimming pool, which he has never seen empty. It seems strange to him, a thing explicitly created by human hands for human enjoyment, and without its water it serves no purpose. Life created it, but without that life, it is empty and meaningless.

There was something sinister about a drained swimming pool... it reminded him of the concrete bunkers in Tsingtao, and the bloody handprints of the maddened German gunners... perhaps murder was about to be committed in all the swimming pools of Shanghai, and their walls were tiled so that the blood could be washed away.
(Ballard, Empire of the Sun, Google Books)

The comparison to the concrete bunkers adds another symbolism to the empty pool; it was created for the enjoyment of life, but now it may serve as a place for death. If so, it will have transcended its purpose and become a place where life ends instead of where life thrives; it can be changed so easily because it is a construct, not a living thing. Without humans, the empty pool is only a void, a place waiting to be filled with something. Human life informs the pool, whether thriving or ending inside it; the empty pool will remain long after humans vanish entirely.

Who is the Cunningham boy in Scout's class who never borrowed what he cannot pay back?

His name is Walter. Check the following scenes that relate to Walter:

1. Scout has a conversation with Mr. Cunningham when he brings hickory nuts as payment for Atticus' legal service. She learns about "entailments."

2. Scout gets in a fight with Mr. Cunningham's sone, Walter, her first day of school because she got in trouble for telling the teacher that the Cunninghams are too proud to take anything from anyone. Jem invites Walter to come home with them for lunch to make up for Scout's behavior.

3. When the mob threatens Atticus at the courthouse, Scout recognizes Mr. Cunningham, reminds him that she is friends with his son, Walter, and her action makes the mob calm down and disperse, thus saving Atticus from possible violence.

What were some of the time traveller's hopes and dreams of the future when he was making the time machine?[From chapter 4 to 5 The time machine]

The Time Traveler builds the time machine for the specific purpose of traveling to the future to find a world where there is no war, where people are equal, where man lives in harmony with the environment.  Writing this book in 1895, Wells was very critical of the advancing Industrial Revolution that he believed widened the class gap between the very rich and the very poor.

The working class was exploited, according to Wells, to fuel the luxurious insatiable lifestyle of the aristocratic class.  There was no regard for how the land and the environment was being damaged and, he believed that technology was advancing too fast.

The time traveler was looking for a utopia, based on the belief that his own society was so imperfect in its current condition that hopefully in the distant future, man would have come to his senses and found a way to create equality, a shared system where each individual had what he needed and there were no rich and no poor.

At first when he arrives in the distant future, he believes that he has found his utopia, as expressed in the opening line of Chapter 5.

"As I stood there musing over this too perfect tirumph of man, the full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overlfow of silver light in the north-east." (Wells)

He expected that when he traveled into the future, he would find that society and mankind had evolved into an advanced race of beings who valued higher learning.

"You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything.  Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five year old children." (Wells)

When he gets to the future, he is shocked and disappointed to discover that the classes of people that have evolved from the roots of his society have not advanced, but turned into an indolent race of emotionless, uneducated beings and a vast group of cannibals who fed upon them.  The class system of Victorian England had hardened into two races of beings, the Eloi, the gentle, uneducated, playful creatures who lived above, and the vicious, working group of monsters who inhabited the underground, the Morlocks.

He believes that the Eloi have come into existence from:

"...the human race, growing weak because they had managed to decrease their population and to erase all "hardship and vigor" from their existence."

and the Morlocks, the working class who were driven underground.

In his pursuit of utopia, the time traveler is confronted with a nightmare scenario, a dystopia, or exact opposite of utopia, so instead of the perfect society, he finds a distorted, imbalance that threatens man's survival as the primary species.

What is so special about the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling?

The poem "If" by Kipling is considered to be a very moving and motivational poem by many.  Part of the reason that the poem is considered to be so special is because it seeks to answer a fundamental question that strikes at the heart of what literature is designed to answer:  "Who am I?" and "What shall we do?"  The poem answers how individuals should pursue their lives and form their identity.  From the opening lines throughout, the poem addresses how human beings should behave in terms of what are the elements that define success. As you read it, you can find these instances where people could use this poem as motivation and guidance.  As you read it, consider the different ways that a parent could use this to talk to their child about the difficulties in adolescent life.   This poem has been used by different people from different walks of life.  Coaches use it to motivate their athletes, business leaders who are seeing to motivate their staff use it, and even principals trying to motivate students (and teachers, sometimes) use this poem as a way to ensure that individuals act within their own senses of self and seek a greater understanding of how to live.  Whether or not we agree that this is what the poem does, many believe it to be special because of this.

Can anyone supply information about changes in government in Meiji period Japan and their impact?I'm doing an assignment about the impact and...

The structure of Japanese government was radically altered by the Meiji Restoration.  It is termed "Restoration" because the Emperor was reestablished as head of state instead of a shogun, although it was more a revolution.  The capital was moved to Edo from Kyoto, and Edo was renamed Tokyo.  The name change was indicative of the changes in the government and country at large, as both "Tokyo" and "Kyoto" mean "city-city," and this stressed the importance of the relocation and the gathering of power into the hands of a new government.

The new government was intended to be one that would allow equality for all citizens, and an attempt to modernize Japan and bring it to equality with the Great Powers of the Western world. The diet was created, an elected legislature.  Universal compulsory education was instituted, with all students attending one type of school instead of the samurai children attending different schools from the children of merchants and peasants.  Although these were great changes, they kept the essence of Japanese culture.  The schools, for instance, taught  "right-living" and the Japanese values of duty to the Emperor, country and family as well as modern academics.

While the education system was modeled after French and German schools, the government was an amalgam of British, American and traditional Japanese ideals.  A constitution was proclaimed in 1889, which established the legislature and left the Empreror as head of the government, the military and of course the state religion of Shinto.  The Navy was modeled after the British system, the Army after the Germans.

Not content to bring experts on modern technologies to Japan, the Japanese reformers sent their own people to foreign countries to study, so that Japan would have their own capabilities to modernize industry.  The aristocratic families which had helped the Emperor overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate, of course, held the real reins of power, but the Emperor Meiji was farsighted enough to go along with their reforms, and also to guide them in many real ways.  He used them not only to overthrow the shogunate and to reform the country, but to reestablish his family as politically important rather than the figureheads they had been under the Tokugawas.  The Emperors had not ruled directly for many centuries, and they still would not, but after Meiji they had more than purely symbolic power.