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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How did Orwell describe Mr. Brooker?
(a) A dark, sour, small boned, filthy man.
(b) A small boned, angry, crippled man.
(c) An ugly, offensive, odd smelling man.
(d) An aggressive, manly, attractive fellow.

2. In a year, how many minors are killed at work?
(a) One in twenty.
(b) One in one hundred.
(c) One in nine hundred.
(d) One in ten thousand.

3. According to Mrs. Brooker, who was "at Canada?"
(a) Many of her children.
(b) Many of her former boarders.
(c) Many of her aunts and uncles.
(d) Many of her husband's relatives.

4. What was the most understandable cause of accidents in a mine?
(a) Collapsing roofs.
(b) Gas explosions.
(c) Exhaustion.
(d) Cancer.

5. How did Orwell describe the meals at the Brooker's house?
(a) "Abjectly woeful."
(b) "Uniformly disgusting."
(c) "Pitifully disgusting."
(d) "Uniformly pitiful."

Short Answer Questions

1. When the Corporation cleaned out the slums and moved its occupants, where did it build housing for them?

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

3. What did miners tell Orwell about why they ate less than he did at a meal?

4. How did Orwell say he was received by the people he spoke with about their housing?

5. In what positions did Orwell find himself moving through the tunnels in the coal mine?

Short Essay Questions

1. What difference did Orwell see in the lives of the working class and the bourgeois that had to do with the humiliation suffered by many miners?

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

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

4. Who were the newspaper canvassers, and what were their jobs?

5. What did Orwell learn about the reality of the seven hour shift worked by the typical miner?

6. Who were some of the boarders at the Brooker's rooming house? How were thought of by the Brookers?

7. Why did Orwell make the comparison between the miner's wages and the amount of coal and money the coal mines produce? What did he want the reader to understand?

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

9. How did a miner clean up upon returning home? Why was cleaning up after work such a difficult task?

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

(see the answer keys)

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