The Road to Wigan Pier

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1937

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-13

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Recipe Generator

Symbols & Motifs

Tea

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. Orwell is a critic of the class system and the middle-class reverence of manners, but even he cannot help but demonstrate the ways in which the class system permeates every aspect of life, including relatively unimportant ones. His anxieties reflect a deep division between the social classes, and tea becomes a symbolic battleground, showing both the unity and the divisions between middle and working-class people. Orwell’s consumption of tea that is not made in his preferred way is therefore symbolic of his desire to break down the boundaries between the classes.

Physical Pollution

The physical pollution caused by industrialization is a symbol of the social pollution in the society. The vast slag heaps and mountains of waste are visible from far away, forever altering the shape of the British countryside. These toxic, grey piles of waste symbolize the mountains of human misery the mining companies inflict on local communities; the slag heaps and the physical pollution represent the broken bodies and spirits of working-class people, who are used and exploited by the companies and then discarded when they are no longer profitable. The descriptions of poor people desperately scrabbling through the mountains of waste to find enough fuel to keep their homes warm in winter also symbolizes the alienation of the working class. Poor people are left to subside on pollution and waste rather than decent wages and rewarding work.

Pollution’s environmental effects are also significant in and of themselves. In the second half of The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell argues that there is no way to return to the pre-industrialized society. The arrival of the machines has changed the world forever, both in a social and a physical sense. The giant mountains of slag are physically imposing and can be seen from miles away. They cannot be simply dismantled, meaning that the reality of industrialization must be reckoned with in the fairest, most equal manner possible. For Orwell, the physical pollution symbolizes the need for socialism.

Pronunciation and Accents

Orwell is very aware of the way in which pronunciations and accents can indicate class differences. As a child, his parents taught him not to play with working-class children because they feared that he would pick up their accent. As an adult, Orwell worries that he identifies himself as middle class whenever he speaks in a working-class community. While many people ignore his accent, he feels very aware of the distance it creates between himself and the subjects of his book. Middle-class and working-class accents create an immediate distinction between speakers, symbolizing the way in which society uses seemingly innocuous customs and details to divide people who might otherwise work together for a better, fairer society.

One of the most pronounced symbols in the book is the letter h. Working-class and middle-class people pronounce this letter in different ways, turning a single letter into a class signifier that immediately creates division. At first, Orwell worries that his pronunciation of the letter will alienate him from the people he is trying to document in the book. The gradual process by which Orwell overcomes this fear symbolizes the way in which he overcomes many of his other class prejudices. When he calls on his audience to abandon traditional ideas of class in favor of a fairer, more equal future, he suggests that all they stand to lose is the way in which they pronounce the letter h. Accents and pronunciation therefore symbolize the important of putting aside superficial differences so that everyone’s lives can improve.