George Orwell's "A Nice Cup of Tea" Commentary

The Exquisite Manners of the Tea Leaf

The first impressions from reading George Orwell’s essay “A Nice Cup of Tea” include Orwell explaining the correct ways of handling the essences of drinking tea. The speaker guides the reader through instructions on how to drink tea and then talks about many of the faults people currently are doing when drinking their tea. The title of the essay directly refers to the essay’s content as well as the idiom which means that something suits someone nicely such as how elegant Orwell describes tea in general. The central meaning within this essay is methods of creating the perfect cup of tea. The central meaning is direct within the essay; however, the central meaning can be converted into a universal meaning that readers can all relate to when reading the particular literary work of George Orwell, which is that people who focus on quality and detail will receive greater results over quantity. Within Orwell’s essay “A Nice Cup of Tea” there are various literary techniques and tools that help enhance the understanding of the central meaning, they are: purpose; tone and mood, structure and syntax, voice and narrative point-of-view, diction, and imagery.   

The purpose, tone and mood of this essay enhances the central meaning directed within the essay. The overall purpose of the entire essay was to raise awareness of the forgotten delicacies of tea due to the advances of civilizations around the world. The purpose compliments the central idea of creating the perfect cup of tea due to the fact that if the central meaning of the text was not present, then there would be no purpose for the reader to read the essay. The tone Orwell expresses within his writing of this literary work is a sense of sincerity, seriousness, and himself being informative all at once. His tone of sincerity and seriousness within the text is to be able to get his points across to the reader with no ambiguities. As well his tone causes his words to be more concise and descriptive which leads to the third attribute to his tone within this essay. Orwell sets his tone to be informative for the reader because he wants the reader to be more interested in tea after he/she reads it and then it eventually leads back to the main purpose of the essay. The mood of the essay expresses a sense of being informed, being more appreciative towards the topic of tea and being more aware after reading the essay. As well, the mood also refers back to the purpose. As you can see, purpose, tone and mood are able to connect to one another to compliment the central meaning which further enhances the reader’s understanding of the text.

The structure and syntax used in Orwell’s essay helps increase the understanding of the central meaning. Within “A Nice Cup of Tea”, each paragraph conveys a certain idea of Orwell’s argument. The first paragraph consists of a hook, the following paragraph explains how important tea is, and then another paragraph states his argument. The following paragraphs follow through explaining the “eleven...points” (Orwell, 1) about making a perfect cup of tea as well as the comments about the current commonalities and examples of how wrongly people treat their tea. Orwell eventually ends with a conclusion that suggests other uses of tea which gives the reader interest in finding out more about the topic. Overall, the structure and paragraphing flows eloquently which helps the reader follow and understand the central meaning of the essay. The effective use of syntax that enabled the smooth flow of ideas come toward reader include the use of capitalization and conjunctions. Within the essay, the capitalization of “WITHOUT SUGAR” (Orwell, 2) gives the phrase more emphasis towards the reader. The emphasis that a capitalization can cause is massive to a reader because the phrase is larger than the rest of the words which shows that drinking tea without sugar is important. As well, the conjunctions that help start the list of creating the perfect cup of tea such as “firstly”, “secondly”, “thirdly”, “fourthly”, “fifthly” (Orwell, 1-2) etc. help emphasize the transitions between each of Orwell’s ideas. Overall, the use of structure and syntax greatly enhance the understanding.
The voice and narrative point-of-view of the essay enhance the understanding of the central idea. The voice of the essay is most likely the author himself, George Orwell and the narrative point-of-view is written in first person. The voice and narrative point-of-view share a similar role in emotionally engaging the reader because the essay is personal and opinion based. The situation within this essay seems that Orwell is trying to talk to the reader due to that fact he refers to the reader in second person as if Orwell was talking to the reader. This causes the reader to be personally engaged which causes better understanding of the central meaning Orwell is trying to convey.
Diction within the essay was used effectively to convey the method of making the perfect cup of tea. Orwell uses connotation based words to describe the incorrect aspects of tea practice such as “tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron tastes of grease and whitewash” (Orwell, 1). The connotations of tasteless, grease and whitewash all convey a sense of the tea turning out distasteful and unpleasant which affects the reader to avoid using those containers to pour tea from. Orwell also uses the diction within the essay “A Nice Cup of Tea” to be precise such as drinking tea using a “cylindrical type of cup” (Orwell, 2). The use of descriptive denotation within the essay helps form the essay into a instruction list which is easy to follow. 
The imagery used by Orwell in this literary work include images caused from descriptive instructions such as “six heaped teaspoons” (Orwell, 1). As well the description of not using strainers or other items to “imprison the tea” (Orwell, 2) cause the reader to picture tea leaves being trapped, unable to release themselves out into the open. This particular image was interesting due to the fact that the image directly magnifies one segment of the eleven points of creating the perfect cup of tea. As well imagery is used when Orwell states that “tea is meant to be bitter” (Orwell, 2) and then he compares it to beer which also is “meant to be bitter” (Orwell, 2). Another similar example of comparison is when he expresses his disapproval towards adding sugar to tea by comparing it to be “equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt” (Orwell, 2). These comparisons help show how and how important it is to enjoy tea at its greatest which enhances ones understanding of the central idea.
The literary techniques and tools Orwell uses within his essay of “A Nice Cup of Tea” are: purpose; tone and mood, structure and syntax, voice and narrative point-of-view, diction, and imagery. From purpose to voice or from syntax to imagery, all of the literary techniques combine together to one another to enhance the understanding the reader has upon this essay. The universal idea derived from the central meaning of quality giving greater results over quantity seems true in life. Exemplified in the essay, “one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones” (Orwell, 1). This idea can be applied to many other ideas such as homework, if one handed in twenty of the same mediocre assignments to the teacher, they would still receive the same low mark; however, if one was to hand in one outstanding assignment, the mark given to that one assignment would stay with a far greater result than twenty of them. These ideas are Orwell’s intentions within the essay “A Nice Cup of Tea”.