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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 was "scrambling for the coal?"
(a) Poor men hijacking train cars and shoveling through them for coins.
(b) Poor men running up the slag piles, digging out coal and putting it in their poclets.
(c) Poor men fighting each other for lumps of coal in the slag.
(d) Poor men shoveling through the slag from the mines and passing the coal to their wives.

2. What four words did Orwell discuss in detail as the reason for class distinctions?
(a) The middle class lie.
(b) The lower class smell.
(c) The upper class steal.
(d) The upper-middle class cheat.

3. What portion of the population of Wigan was living on unemployment, including family members?
(a) One eighth.
(b) One third.
(c) One half.
(d) One forth.

4. How does a machine evolve in Orwell's opinion?
(a) By becoming obsolete.
(b) By becoming more streamlined and smaller.
(c) By becoming more efficient and more foolproof.
(d) By achieving perfection.

5. How did Orwell describe a slag heap?
(a) "A horrid blight on the landscape."
(b) "A thing of beauty rising in the distance."
(c) "A testiment to man's toil."
(d) "A hideous thing, planless and functionless."

Short Answer Questions

1. Why were the industrial towns in England so ugly and noxious?

2. Who was Comrade X?

3. What did Orwell find was the basis of the diet for families of the unemployed?

4. What were the occupational centers of the thirties?

5. With what, according to Orwell, is socialism inextricably connected?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the slag heaps found in northern England. What did they look like? What were they eventually used for in Wigan?

2. What was the employment situation in Wigan and Sheffield, the two towns Orwell wrote about?

3. What does the statement by Napoleon "an army marches on its stomach" mean in context of life in industrialized England?

4. Why did Orwell consider Socialism a way out of the social and economic conditions plaguing England in the 1930's? How did he present his argument?

5. What story did Orwell relate about the beer bottle? How did this support his dislike of the working class body? How did he say he was able to overcome this dislike?

6. What was the unemployment situation in England in the 1930's? How did Orwell's figures differ from official government figures?

7. What were the reasons Orwell cited for Socialism being intrinsically tied to machine industrialization?

8. Why did Orwell think Socialism was not on the rise in England? What did he think Socialists were doing to discourage people from participating?

9. Where did Orwell go to live for five years when he was twenty? What were the difference in class distinctions he observed there?

10. What did Orwell do in order to learn more about the working class conditions he had previously not understood? How did he go about trying to be a part of the working class and see the world through their eyes?

(see the answer keys)

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