29 pages • 58-minute read
Examination Day
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of coerced drug use and child death.
Genre Context: The Subverted Bildungsroman
The overall structure of “Examination Day” is one of a subverted bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story in which a character learns lessons and has experiences that transform them from a child into an adult. In a typical bildungsroman, the protagonist goes through a symbolic rite of passage that marks their growth from childhood to adulthood. The story then recounts how they have changed as a result.
“Examination Day” ironically subverts this expected story arc. The action begins on the 12th birthday of the protagonist, Dickie Jordan, but his rite of passage—“the exam”—leads to the end of his life rather than the beginning of a new one. Rather than passing from childhood to adulthood, Dickie is considered unworthy of attaining adulthood by his state, which determines who gets the privilege of living to adulthood based on meeting their criteria for intelligence.
Mr. and Mrs. Jordan are adults, which implies that their IQs were low enough to pass the Government’s exam. Their acceptance of Dickie’s fate—without rebelling against the system, helping Dickie escape, or otherwise trying to change his situation—means they have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the regime’s beliefs, proving the Government’s program a success. A bildungsroman is usually a novel, charting the protagonist’s long course of exploration and development. “Examination Day’s” brevity underscores that in an authoritarian regime, childhood is cut short—whether by execution or indoctrination that takes away their individuality and agency, the hallmarks of adulthood.
Historical Context: American Science Fiction’s Response to Cold War Culture
Like many science fiction stories of the 1950s and 1960s, “Examination Day” is shaped by and responds to American cultural fears during the Cold War era. Following the end of World War II, the capitalist United States and their allies were arrayed against the communist Soviet Union and its allies. There was no direct conflict between the two superpowers. Instead, proxy wars were fought globally to shift the balance of power in favor of one of the nuclear superpowers. This global conflict filtered into American popular culture.
American writers, including science fiction writers, criticized the Soviet regime as totalitarian. They saw communist ideology generally—and in the USSR specifically—as a means of control that used repression, censorship, and propaganda to force its citizens to conform. They feared that if the USSR won the Cold War that a similar regime would be installed in the United States. “Examination Day” can be read as an expression of what such a Soviet-style regime of conformity and totalitarianism would look like in the 1950s United States.
However, the story can also be read as a response to changes in American culture at the time. The work is set in an ideal American home, as can be gleaned from its presentation of the Jordans as a typical white 1950s suburban family. Mrs. Jordan is the emotional, dutiful housewife; Mr. Jordan is the stoic father reading his newspaper in an armchair; and Dickie Jordan is the obedient, blond-haired child.
American culture in the 1950s promoted conformity that many found stifling. English professor Leerom Medovoi points out: “In that decade, […] hand-wringing over the term “conformity” alluded not only to the feared evils of Soviet totalitarianism but also to a perceived loss of American individualism at the hands of the new forms of mass standardization” (Leerom Medovoi. “Books in Review.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 27, no. 3, Nov. 2000, p. 515).
The negative effects of intellectual conformity as a result of both government suppression and passive consumerism are shown in Dickie’s father, who cannot explain how the rain makes grass grow. “No one knows,” he says, indicating that a lack of basic knowledge is part of their society’s fabric. Although “Examination Day” doesn’t implicate capitalism explicitly, it suggests that a country does not need a communist economy to become a conformist subject.
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