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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. Who did Orwell go to hear speak while he was in Sheffield?

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

3. Why did Orwell have the opportunity to receive an expensive public school education?

4. How long was Orwell a member of the Indian Police?

5. How did Orwell describe the attitude toward education in the working class?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Orwell explain the attitude toward the family in a working class society? How did it differ in his opinion from the middle class man and his family?

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

3. 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?

4. What did Orwell identify as the two methodologies for abolishing the class system in England? Why did he believe neither of these two to be viable?

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

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

7. 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?

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

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

10. What was the Means Test? Why did people dislike the Means Test?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the first chapter, Orwell described the meals provided by the Brookers to their lodgers. These meals were non-nutritious and in no way sated a man's hunger. How is this nutritional issue symbolic of other themes in his book, such as the poor and the country's need for Socialism?

Essay Topic 2

In his descriptions of unemployment in the middle and working classes, Orwell explained that the men and their families in each class had a vastly different reaction to the condition. Orwell contended that the working class man was better equipped to lose his job and become unemployed than the middle class man. What were some of the reasons Orwell cited for this? Can you find proof in studying the middle and working classes to support Orwell's contention that one class was better equipped than another to be out of work?

Essay Topic 3

Orwell used his childhood and upbringing as an example of social class, class prejudices and class values. Discuss the differences Orwell saw between the bourgeois, the lower-middle class and the working class in England in the 1930's. Why was this distinction between the classes important to Orwell in his discussion of Socialism?

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