The Road to Wigan Pier

As a quintessentially, stereotypically British pastime, the consumption of tea is an important symbol in The Road to Wigan Pier. Tea illustrates the ways in which a community can come together, as well as the potential for a utopian society that abandons any class-based systems. People of all classes consume tea throughout the book. Orwell describes how poor miners drink tea at home and at work, while there is always a kettle brewing in the background in the houses he visits. Tea is also a communal activity, whether it involves the Brooker family, the tenants, or the men at the bottom of a mine; tea and the act of drinking it provide a moment of unity in which everyone has a common goal, as well as a moment of reflection and relaxation. Drinking tea thus symbolizes a shared humanity that might be hidden at first, but that nevertheless exists inside everyone Orwell meets.

However, while working-class and middle-class people alike drink tea, the ways in which they drink it provide insight into the differences between the classes. Orwell struggles to abandon his sense of middle-class etiquette that he has developed over the course of his life. While staying in a lodging house, for example, he worries that the tea will not be brewed long enough and that the wrong ingredients will be added.