Examination Day by Henry Slesar

The story Examination Day is a short dystopian story by Henry Slesar. The story takes place in the future city, when every children turns 12 they need to take the Government exam. The exam is about seeing how smart and intelligent they are. The young main character Dickie Jordan who just turned 12 had some conversation with their family about exam. After he took the exam the phone call came to the parents and the phone call was about Dickie went over the government’s intelligence quotient. The lesson that I learned from this class is that when power takes over the power can break everything.

In the beginning part of the story I can found the first evidence that can support my claim. The Jordans have never spoke about the exam until Dickie turned 12 when Dickie’s mom asked a question about exam Dickie’s dad anwered sharply like ‘Forget about it.’ By seeing this I can see Dickie’s dad know something about it but there is more important thing than family so he couldn’t tell them the truth. The action that Dickie’s father made was also related to this, it looks like he doesn’t like to talk about the test to Dickie. For example there are actions like ‘his father said, getting up from the table.’, his father snapped, then immediately regretted his abruptness. For the counterclaim I think dad showed those kind of mean actions to protect Dickie from the Government. In the beginning of story Dickie asked many questions to his dad such as ‘why did it have to rain today?’, ‘how far away is the sun?’ By seeing this I can think about the counterclaim. Because dad love Dickie so much he tried to protect him, what I think is dad already knew Dickie is way too smart than other kids. When he asked questions dad blocked them because he wanted him to stop knowing things for the exam. Also before the exam dad told many informations about the exam like drinking liquid.

When I see this story in the government’s perspective, what they want is the power to control the citizens. The evidence that supports my idea is the death of Dickie. In government’s perspective it is dangerous to keep the smart people in their society because, when they grow up they might interrupt the government. For the real life example people related to Korean government does lots of things passed few years there were things like ex president Park who used taxes for her own money and Choi Soon Sil who also used the taxes even though she wasn’t a government people.

Additionally the power came with huge disester in Dickie’s family. In the last paragraph of the story there was a sentence that shows how stressed and emotionally painful are Dickie’s mom and dad ‘Across the room, the woman cried out, knowing nothing except the emotion she read on her husband’s face.’ The power that the government wanted destroyed the hope of one family. For example, In 2014 the Sewol ferry which was sank and lots of people died. Yoo Byung Un and the workers of him who change mechanic part the Sewol Ferry because they wanted personal museum which lead thousand people to death. By seeing this kind of example I could found the desire for power are lead to disaster of the people. I think the power that the government want can be a snowball for them. Most of the famous dystopian novels for example (hunger game, and the Divergent series) government use citizens to grow their power but later in the story most of them get wrecked. By seeing this I think