'Tea with the Birds', analyse af Joanna Harris

Anyone can turn uncertain circumstances and frightening situations into their comfort zone by putting in an appropriate effort. It’s not fixed that the current “you” is who you will be forever and that your identity issues cannot be resolved.

To have “BRED IN CAPTIVITY” (p.2, l.6) to have “wings fluttering, ready to fly away” (p. 6, l. 185), is an example of how the author of the short story, Joanna Harris, describes the narrator’s escape from her social solitude. The short story revolves around personal development and seclusion. Harris applies a first person point of view to the story’s narrator with the intention of giving the reader a unique perspective from which you get insight into the way having difficulties with associating with others can have a huge impact on how you might wind up isolating yourself. Furthermore, the text doesn’t give an exhaustive description or explanation of the personal development of the narrator in itself. Consequently, reading in between the lines and interpreting excerpts of the text is required in order to thoroughly understand the plot.

The use of imagery is a strong presence in the text and gives the reader a greater understanding of the conflict in a strong, vivid and very visual way. “He reminded me of a bird (…). Small and drab-looking in its cage, it huddled in a corner, barely moving (…) Its eyes were all age and sadness. (…) I saw it every morning in my own bathroom mirror.” (l.4 p.2) In this excerpt, Harris uses the narrator’s thought of this particular bird in its cage as a picture of how she finds Mr Tamaoki’s appearance and how she thinks of herself. Without making use of straight and directly describing words, the narrator informs us that the man, from the apartment opposite of hers, seems rather dismal and dull and behaves distinctly modestly – he doesn’t want to interact excessively with others. Additionally by the use of the bathroom mirror as imagery, the reader makes an inference that the narrator feels the same way about herself.Another example of a powerful and effective use of imagery is this: “I noticed that in the semi-darkness of my room, with the fire casting stilted red shadows on the wall, the rising steam looked like a bird’s wings fluttering, ready to fly away.” (p. 6, l 185). The fluttering wings that are ready to fly away are a picture of the narrator’s gained courage and fearlessness of extricating herself from her solitude and finally socialising with others. The wings of steam supports this. The reason being that the steam is a picture of rising and being free. By means of this recurring figurative language, the reader receives images in its head that helps to interpret the situation in the way the narrator sees it. These images are far more well describing and portraying than straightforward and elementary words would have been.