Tea with the Birds

This study guide will help you analyse the text “Tea with the Birds” by Joanne Harris. We will show you examples of elements in the text that will be relevant for your analysis. In these notes, we will focus on the summary, structure, characters, setting, narrator and point of view, language, themes and message, and help you put the text in perspective.

Presentation of the text

Title: “Tea with the Birds”
Author: Joanne Harris
Published in: Jigs and Reels
Date of Publication: 2004
Genre: Short story

Joanne Harris (b. 1964) is an English contemporary writer. She began writing in the 1980s and her works often explore themes like identity, parent-children relationships, superstition, or people’s emotional connection with food. Her best-known novel is Chocolat which was adapted into a film of the same name.

Further help

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Engelsk

Short story analysis

I denne vejledning får du Studienets hjælp til at analysere noveller (short stories) i engelsk.

Uddrag

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Title

The title of the short story—“Tea with the Birds”—is intriguing at first because it reveals very little about the story’s plot. After reading the short story, the title becomes symbolic of the narrator’s perspective on people (her neighbours) and of the event that makes her abandon her social isolation (which is both caused by the neighbours’ attitude and self-imposed). In the story, the narrator views her neighbours “like birds in cages” (l. 8). She feels like an outsider on her street, rejected by people’s gossiping attitude. But although she is critical, she is also anti-social herself, preferring to spend time alone and avoid socialising.