29 pages • 58-minute read
Examination Day
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Symbols & Motifs
Information Control
In “Examination Day,” a key method the Government uses to exercise its authority is through information control and develops the theme of Intelligence as a Liability in Authoritarian Regimes. This motif is used throughout the narrative to show how the Government accomplishes its goal of ensuring that its citizens remain ignorant. It is suggested that the only permissible media are those approved by the Government. Mr. Jordan does not read an independent newspaper, only a “Government newspaper,” meaning that the Government decides what news people learn. Dickie, meanwhile, does not have proper books that would be appropriate for a boy his age, such as adventure novels or scientific primers. Instead, he has only comic books full of “colorful squares of fast-paced action” (Paragraph 27). These are not books meant to educate him, but only to entertain him.
The effects of this information control can be seen in a telling exchange between Dickie and his father. Dickie asks his father how far the Sun is from the Earth, and his father replies “five thousand miles” (Paragraph 16). The correct answer is approximately 93 million miles. His father has been kept ignorant of this and other scientific facts by the Government and he passes this ignorance to his child, demonstrating how Government information control is reinforced within the family unit.
The Exam
The “exam” is a motif that relates to the theme of intelligence as a liability in authoritarian regimes. Mrs. Jordan describes it as a “Government Intelligence test” (Paragraph 5) that measures a subject’s Intelligence Quotient or IQ. IQ tests were first developed in the early 20th century. At that time, some scientists, namely American Henry H. Goddard, advocated for using IQ tests to further a pseudoscientific eugenics program with the goal of eliminating “undesirable” traits from the population. He promoted a program that those with low IQs should be sterilized so that they would not reproduce and thereby “pass” their lack of intelligence on to the next generation. At least 70,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized as a result. During World War II, the Nazis adopted a similar program.
“Examination Day” describes a speculative dystopia where the government uses a similar IQ-linked eugenics project. However, instead of targeting those with low IQs, the exam is designed to eliminate those with high IQs., presumably because they constitute a threat to the established order. The exact details of what the exam entails is kept vague, but it involves a machine (Paragraph 49). The routinized, regulated, mechanized, impersonal nature of the exam is a stereotype of government procedures, even those with devastating outcomes like the real-life American eugenics program.
Classification Number
When Dickie sits for the exam, he is given a classification number. This classification number is symbolic of the dehumanization that is emblematic of the Government and its disregard for human life. The Government uses the bureaucratic language of rules and regulations to disguise the brutal nature of their activity and uses numbers to dehumanize its subjects. To the Government, the subject is not Dickie, a young boy who loves his parents and is curious about the world. They see him only as “Classification 600-115”: a unit, item, or statistic. In the phone call to his parents informing him of his death, the Government does not use his familiar name “Dickie,” they refer to him as “Richard M Jordan, Classification 600-115” (Paragraph 54), continuing the use of this cold, administrative language even when talking to a grieving parent. They justify their decision with even more regulatory language, citing “Rule 84 Section 5 of the New Code” (Paragraph 54), in a manner reminiscent of a police officer writing a speeding ticket. The use of this dehumanizing language heightens the Kafkaesque tragedy and absurdity of the story as a whole.
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