What is the significance of the title with respect to the short story, "The Lumber Room"?

The title of Saki's short story, "The Lumber Room" is significant because this forbidden room represents the self-appointed aunt's lack of imagination and appreciation for creativity, all of which Nicholas possesses. The boy's ability to find the key and enter into this room represents his victory over his aunt's petty dullness.
After he is punished for his subversive prank of tricking the obtuse aunt about a frog being in his morning bowl of bread-and-milk, Nicholas is sentenced to remain home while his boy and girl cousins are afforded the privilege of going to the beach. And, because he is in "disgrace," Nicholas is forbidden entrance into the gooseberry garden. Now, because Nicholas could enter this garden by one of two doors and hide in the "masking growth" of vegetables, the aunt decides that she will have to keep the garden under her surveillance: 

...she spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations among flower beds and shrubberies, whence she could watch the two doors that led to the forbidden paradise. She was a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration.

While she is thus occupied, Nicholas sneaks off to the lumber room for which he has discovered the key. He opens the door and enters into "an unknown land" filled with artistic items such as a tapestry which tells the story of a hunter and his dogs, who pursue a stag. There several other interesting items are stored, among them a book of delightful pictures of resplendent birds.
After a while, Nicholas hears a shrill cry from his aunt, who has fallen into a water tank in the gooseberry garden. Again, he foils her as she cries for rescue, but he cleverly reminds her that he has been forbidden to enter this garden. So, she must remain in this embarrassing position until a kitchen maid needs vegetables from this garden and hears her cries.
That evening, it is an aunt who sits in "frozen muteness" at supper because the cousins have not enjoyed their day, either. Only the silence of Nicholas contains bemusement as he wonders whether the hunter and his hounds will escape while the wolves devour his wounded stag in the lumber room. 
 
 
 

In Speak, what was Melinda's journey, and why did she embark on it?

Melinda's journey in Speak is to find a voice taken away as a result of being sexually abused at a party the summer before her first year of high school.
The sexual assault Melinda suffers at the hands of Andy Evans takes her voice away.  The trauma she experienced in addition to everyone in her social group blaming her for calling the police and breaking up the party where the rape took place contributes to her silence. As high school begins, Melinda finds herself socially ostracized.  She is unable to fit in anywhere and with anyone.  As a result of social and psychological marginalization, Melinda is unable to "speak" in a literal and symbolic way.
Reclaiming her voice constitutes her journey.  She has to navigate many different obstacles in her path such as uncaring teachers, even more unfeeling students, and, of course, "IT."  She must voyage through the painful condition of nothingness in order to find her voice: "I wash my face in the sink until there is nothing left of it, no eyes, no nose, no mouth!  A slick nothing!" Melinda finds some sources of assistance on her journey, such as the sage-like words of her art teacher:  

When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.  You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside- walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job."  It's the saddest thing I know.

Melinda's journey takes her through intellectual stopping points, such as comparing herself to Hawthorne's heroine, Hester, in The Scarlet Letter: "...S for silent, for stupid, for scared.  S for silly.  For shame."  Her quest requires her to recognize the obstacles in the outside world and rise above it: "It is easier not to say anything... Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say." 
As her first year of high school comes to a close, Melinda is able to find her voice.  She emerges to this point as "tears dissolve the last block of ice" which blocks her ability to speak.  She is able to experience the "dripping shards of ice that vanish in a puddle of sunlight on the stained floor. Words float up."  Her confrontation with "IT" one last time is when Melinda comes full circle in her journey.

Apply the historical approach in criticism to the characters Maggie and Tom Tulliver from the novel The Mill On The Floss.

Historical criticism, as the name implies, interprets a work of literature within the context of its time period and the life of its author. The Mill on the Floss is in many ways an autobiographical novel. Maggie, born around the same time as Eliot (whose really name was Mary Ann Evans), is similar to Eliot, while Tom is based on Eliot's older brother Isaac. 
Patriarchy is one of the historical contexts that impacts both Maggie and Tom. Through both the legal system and cultural norms, men, considered innately superior to women both physically and intellectually, were given most of the power in mid-19th century England. Women were little more than property and society was organized to keep them within the web of male-dominated social and financial relationships. Therefore, although she is very "quick," or intelligent, Maggie is not given the same educational opportunities as Tom—such as the chance to learn Latin—specifically because she is a girl and girls were pre-judged not to have the same depth of intellect as males. Tom is less intelligent than Maggie, but is given more opportunities, power and responsibility because of his gender. 
Further, like Eliot, Maggie steps out of the strict gender boundaries established to keep women under the control of their families. Maggie, like Eliot, transgresses against Victorian (and pre-Victorian, as the novel begins around 1829) ideals of womanhood which valued docility, meekness, kindness, obedience, serving others selflessly, and quiet domestic attainments—and contentment with this lot. While Maggie, like the young Eliot, is deeply attracted to Christianity, an approved outlet for women, Maggie is also full of anger and seething emotions, anything but docile. As a young girl, for example, she expresses her anger by driving nails into her doll's head, re-enacting a story in the Bible in which the Hebrew woman Jael subverts domestic norms to drive a tent peg into the head of an enemy leader, killing him and becoming a heroine as a result. 
Like Eliot, Maggie breaks sexual taboos when she floats down the river alone with Stephen Guest. He wants to avoid a scandal by marrying her, but she refuses. Eliot herself got involved in a long-term unmarried relationship with George Lewes, a married man, highly scandalous for that time period. Like Isaac with Eliot, Tom sharply repudiates Maggie for her actions. 
Overall, both Maggie and Eliot are stunted by the historical period in which they live because of the rigid gender roles that ignored the reality of individual personality and intelligence. 
 
 
 
 

How is the title of The Wednesday Wars significant to the plot?

The title of the book is significant to the story because it references what has to happen to Holling Hoodhood every Wednesday afternoon.  
Holling is a Protestant. That's important because he is the only Protestant who attends his school. Everybody else is either Catholic or Jewish. On Wednesday afternoons, all the Catholic students go to Catechism, and all the Jewish students go to Hebrew studies. The administration has to figure out something to do with Holling. Their solution is to put him in a study hall-type class with Mrs. Baker.  
Mrs. Baker is not happy about the situation, and she initially makes Holling do menial tasks like clean desks and chalkboards. Holling doesn't enjoy it, and he believes Mrs. Baker hates his guts. After about a month, Mrs. Baker decides to use the time with Holling to teach him Shakespeare and have him read a play per month. Holling thinks that's just about the worst thing possible. He feels Wednesdays are essentially a battle between him and Mrs. Baker, hence the title The Wednesday Wars. As the novel progresses, Holling and Mrs. Baker grow to enjoy their time together.

Why was Rustum not able to live with his wife for a long time?

The poem "Sohrab and Rustum" is part of the Persian epic of Shahnameh.
However, the poems don't provide explicit reasons for why Rustum is not able to live with his wife for a long time. Despite this, we can still make some educated guesses by reading between the lines.
In Shahnameh, Rustum is hunting near the city of Samangan when he loses his beloved horse, Rakhsh. Accordingly, Rakhsh is stolen by some Turanian knights. For his part, Rustum is devastated by the loss of his prized steed. Meanwhile, the Samangan king invites Rustum to stay the night at his palace. The king tells Rustum that he can resume his search in the morning.
During the night hours, the king's daughter, Tahmina, approaches Rustum. She tells him that she has long admired him for his exploits. After all, Rustum is greatly feared by other warriors. Tahmina then offers herself in marriage to Rustum and promises him that she will lay all of Samangan at his feet. As for Rustum, he accepts Princess Tahmina's generous proposition.
The next morning, Rustum's steed is returned to him. After bidding Tahmina a sad farewell, Rustum returns to his country. Shahnameh tells us that Tahmina gives birth to a son nine months after Rustum's departure. She names the baby boy Sohrab. This is the same Sohrab that Rustum unwittingly kills in the poem "Sohrab and Rustum."
From the epic poem Shahnameh, we learn that Rustum is a great warrior. He has battled armies in every land and performed legendary feats. So, part of the reason Rustum is not able to live with Tahmina for a time is because he had to return to his own country, Zabulistan. There, Rustum is a paladin or holy warrior. So, Rustum had responsibilities to his own king and country: this is why he had to return to Zabulistan.
Also, the poem "Sohrab and Rustum" hints at another reason Rustum did not live with Tahmina for a time. In the poem, it is revealed that Tahmina lied about the sex of her child. She sent word to Rustum that she had borne a girl. She lied because she feared that Rustum would raise any boy child of his as a warrior. So, Rustum did not return to Tahmina for a time because he believed that he had a daughter, one who could not be raised as a warrior.

What is the nature of gods in Greek mythology?

The gods of ancient Greece were of an entirely different nature to deities in the monotheistic faiths such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam. To a large extent, they were created out of the projection of a wide variety of human characteristics, both good and bad. The gods were an integral part of the stories ancient Greeks told each other; and as these stories were often based upon the innate fallibility of human nature, it was always inevitable that the gods would themselves display similar character traits. Just as human beings are often devious, cruel, violent, greedy, and stupid, so too were the immortals, albeit on a much larger scale.
In telling tales of their gods, the Greeks were not attempting in any way to construct a system of religion based upon absolute truth, such as Christianity, for example. The Greeks certainly believed in their gods; but the gods were always inextricably linked to the telling of stories, stories told primarily about human beings and their foibles. But these were never "just" stories; they were a crucial means for a primitive people to explain the world around them, a world often beset by plague, famine, war, and natural disaster. The gods of Olympus allowed the Greeks to make sense of an often harsh, chaotic world.
Although the gods live far away from humankind on top of Mount Olympus, as projections of human nature, they are never completely separate from mortals. They make regular appearances in the material world, taking on the shape of animals, humans, and inanimate objects. They constantly meddle and interfere in the lives of individuals, races, and whole nations alike, often to catastrophic effect. One only has to think of the brutally cynical behavior of the gods during the Trojan War in the Iliad to see an illustration of this. In fact, had the gods not intervened, that war would never have broken out in the first place. And having effectively started the war, the gods are keen to see it continue largely for their own pleasure. So just when it seems that the Trojans and the Achaeans might actually reach some kind of truce, down comes Athena, disguised as a Trojan, to stir things up again.
Even here, though, there is some method to what seems like utter madness. By attributing ultimate responsibility to the gods for a seemingly never-ending conflict, the Greeks were unconsciously providing themselves with an explanation for the permanence of war in their civilization, with all its terrible repercussions. In a way, the gods could be used as a convenient excuse to avoid asking difficult questions about certain aspects of Greek culture and society. If things were bad, if say the harvest had failed, or the city state had been invaded yet again, or a terrible, deadly plague was sweeping the land, then it was strangely comforting to think that this was just how the gods had decreed it.
Greek gods are not so much immoral as amoral. Immorality would imply that they somehow deviate from an established moral code. But they abide by no such set of values. They are the gods, after all; they live by their own rules, rules they devised for themselves and for their own benefit. It therefore made little sense for ancient Greeks to curse the gods for their cruel, unjust behavior (though many of them did). The gods, however gratuitously sadistic and unpleasant their behavior often appears to be, always act according to their own standards.
Despite their constant interactions with mortals, the gods are a race apart, and they know this. This sense of otherness and transendence inculcates a sense of overweening pride in the gods which must at all times be flattered by the mere mortals down below. The gods are insanely proud and jealous; they know what is their due and they intend to see that they get it. If any mortal should be foolish enough to defy or challenge the gods in any way, then woe betide them. Arachne, the gifted weaver, learned this lesson to her cost when she made the mistake of challenging Athena to a weaving contest. Accounts differ as to who actually won, but in the long run it was Arachne who lost out, cruelly transformed into a spider as punishment for her gross impertinence.
Even on the rare occasions when mortals are graciously admitted to the inner sanctum of Mount Olympus, they must still know their place. When Ixion is invited by Zeus to dine with the gods, he foolishly lusts after Hera. As well as tricking Ixion by getting him to have sex with a cloud in the form of Hera, Zeus orders Hermes to bind him to a fiery solar wheel which will spin for all eternity.
In both the examples just cited, the mortals concerned were undone by hubris, or overweening pride. Another way of saying this is to say that Arachne, Ixion, and countless others were trying to become more god-like, breaking their natural bounds to make an ill-judged grab for immortality, the sole preserve of the gods. In the pride of the gods, then, we are introduced to yet another essential function of the Greek pantheon. The gods serve to act as a salutary reminder of what can happen if humans get too arrogant, too conceited, too boastful, too proud. In other words, if they start acting just like the gods themselves.
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/greek-mythology

Aqueous zinc chloride is added to a sample of acidified aqueous silver nitrate. (i) What can be observed? (ii) What ionic equation, with state symbols, can be constructed for the reaction that occurs?

Part (i) asks What can be Observed?  Notice we start with aqueous forms of two compounds, which means initially we have two clear solutions.  (These compounds also happen to be colorless, but you wouldn't necessarily know that.)  Also, note that both compound names include a metal with, in one case, a nonmetal (chloride) and in the other, a polyatomic anion (nitrate).  These are therefore both ionic compounds.
In mixing together two aqueous solutions, most likely we are looking for formation of a precipitate, i.e., a solid that forms from the solution.  This can occur if either of the products of a double replacement reaction, where the positive ion from one compound combines with the anion from the other compound and vice versa, is insoluble.  To determine this, we figure out what the possible products would be, and use a solubility table to find out if either is insoluble.  In this case, silver chloride will be found to be insoluble.
Thus silver chloride will precipitate, and the observation would be that when the two clear solutions are mixed, the mixture becomes cloudy and a solid gradually settles to the bottom of the container.
ii) The correct equation begins with the formulas.  Finding formulas for ionic compounds requires finding the charges of all ions, and writing a formula that includes the smallest whole-number ratio that makes the formula electrically neutral (total positive and negative charges are equal).  You may have had to memorize that zinc forms the Zn+2 ion and silver forms Ag+; you can also find this information in many places, including ptable.com.  From the Periodic Table you can infer that chloride has a charge of -1, and a table of polyatomic ions shows that nitrate also has a charge of -1.  Thus the formulas are ZnCl2, AgNO3, Zn(NO3)2, and AgCl.
Write these as an equation and be sure to balance it:
     ZnCl2(aq) + 2 AgNO3(aq) --> Zn(NO3)2(aq) + 2 AgCl(s)
Here the (aq) state label is used for all aqueous compounds, including zinc nitrate since it is soluble.  Silver chloride is insoluble and forms a solid, so it is labeled (s).  Soluble (aqueous) compounds are assumed to be ionized in water, so we can write the ionic equation being careful with coefficients on the individual ions
Zn^(+2)(aq) + 2 Cl^(-)(aq) + 2 Ag^(+)(aq) + 2 NO_(3)^(-)(aq) -gt Zn^(+2)(aq) + 2 NO_(3)^(-)(aq) + 2 AgCl(s)
Note all ions are labeled (aq), and the solid silver chloride is written as the compound.
We can also write the net ionic equation by eliminating the spectator ions, those that appear on both sides:
Ag^(+)(aq) + Cl^(-)(aq) -> AgCl(s)
Since there were two of every remaining species, it is correct to somplify all of the coefficients to 1 (no coefficient).  This equation leaves out the information of what compounds were actually mixed together, but has the advantage of clearly showing that silver and chloride ions join together to form solid silver chloride.
 
 
 

Zinc chloride is an ionic chemical salt with the formula ZnCl2.  It is composed of the zinc cation (Zn++) and two chloride anions (Cl-).  Silver nitrate is also an ionic chemical salt with the formula AgNO3.  It is composed of a silver cation (Ag+) and a nitrate anion (NO3-).  Both chemicals are soluble in water, and when mixed together you need to know that the silver and chloride anions will react to form silver chloride (AgCl), a chemical that is a white solid and is largely insoluble in water.  So the answer to part one is that two clear aqueous solutions will be mixed together to make a cloudy mixture with a fine white solid suspended in the water.  To answer the second part, let's look at the complete ionic equation below:
Zn_(aq)^(2+) + 2Cl_(aq)^(-) + 2Ag_(aq)^(+) + 2NO3_(aq)^(-) -> 2AgCl_(s) + Zn_(aq)^(2+) + 2NO3_(aq)^(-)
This shows that the zinc chloride and silver nitrate will form solid silver chloride and zinc nitrate, which is completely soluble in water and will remain as ions.  The net ionic equation eliminates the unused spectator ions and is shown below:
2Cl_(aq)^(-) + 2Ag_(aq)^(+) -> 2AgCl_(s)