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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What were some of the restrictions placed on residents of Corporation housing?

2. What is a "gob fire?"

3. What were the first sounds Orwell heard in the morning when he woke at the Brookers?

4. How did the Brookers view the two old age pensioners that lived in their house?

5. How many people shared the bedroom in which Orwell slept at the Brookers?

Short Essay Questions

1. Orwell stated that the Brookers were typical of most people in the modern world. What characteristics did he point out as typical?

2. What was one major convenience added to the more modern mines in England? What myth often told about miners did this modern convenience dispel?

3. Why were the fillers an important part of the coal mining business? What were their jobs?

4. What is nystagmus? How is it contracted? How is it cured? What happened to a miner in Orwell's time who contracted nystagmus?

5. When people moved into the Corporation housing, what were some of the restrictions by which they had to abide?

6. Describe the elevator that took Orwell and the miners down to the tunnels.

7. What were the newer government (Corporation) houses like? What were the positive and negative aspects of the housing?

8. There were three shift in the mines Orwell discussed. What happened in each of the three shifts?

9. What were some of the common conditions in the houses Orwell studied for his book?

10. What did the miners look like when they emerged from the coal mines? What were some of the first things they did upon coming above ground?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Orwell spent a good deal of his life promoting Socialism and struggling with the issue of class differences and prejudices. He contended that to abolish class distinction, a person must be willing to abolish part of himself. What did he mean by this?

Essay Topic 2

Orwell explained that as a child, he was taught that the lower class, the working class, smells. What did this mean to Orwell as a child? As he grew up, how did this concept of a visceral odor become both literal and figurative? How does the concept of the working class smell affect the struggle Socialism faces with class issues in England?

Essay Topic 3

There is an inherent conflict on Socialism between the advancement of the machine state and industrialization and the working man's job. How did Orwell address this conflict? How did he believe Socialism should address the conflict? Do you believe the two--the machine state and the working man--are by nature at odds with each other? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

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