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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. What did Orwell learn had happened to Wigan Pier?
(a) It was converted into a caravan park.
(b) It was turned into a diner.
(c) It had been demolished.
(d) It was a myth and never existed.

2. What did each of the permanent lodgers get for their ten shillings a week rent?
(a) A bedroom, a shared bath, and two meals a day.
(b) An attic room, a toilet, and one meal a day.
(c) A couch in a living area, a shared bath, and one meal a day.
(d) A bed in the attic and meals that were mostly bread and butter.

3. Why does every miner have a blue scar on his nose and forehead?
(a) Coal dust reacts with the nasal passages.
(b) Coal dust enters the wound and the skin grows over it.
(c) The blue is a bruise.
(d) Every miner hits his nose and forehead sometimes.

4. How did Orwell say he was received by the people he spoke with about their housing?
(a) With kindness and good food.
(b) With curiosity and suspicion.
(c) With hostility and suspicion.
(d) With courtesy and good nature.

5. How did the Brookers view the two old age pensioners that lived in their house?
(a) They thought of them as a danger because they smoked in bed.
(b) They did not think of them at all as long as they paid their rent.
(c) They thought of them as two old, quiet men bothering no one.
(d) They thought of them as dreadful parasites living on their charity.

Short Answer Questions

1. When a miner comes up from the pit, why does he appear to be pale?

2. What did Orwell say the fillers looked like?

3. What did Orwell say about the Corporation housing as a whole?

4. In a year, how many minors are killed at work?

5. Who did most of the cooking and laundry at the Brooker house?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Who were the Brookers? How did Orwell describe them? What did they look like? Behave like?

3. 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?

4. Why did Orwell believe it was important to understand the working conditions of the miners? What did he see as the larger story?

5. Describe the meals Orwell was offered while living at the Brookers. Who cooked the meals? What were the boarders given to eat for dinner?

6. How did Orwell come to write "The Road to Wigan Pier?" When did he write the book? For whom? What were the three parts of the book when it was originally published?

7. What were some of the reasons Orwell gave for a miner's pay being much lower than his publicized wage?

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

9. 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?

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?

(see the answer keys)

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