Many consider Seamus Heaney to be the greatest Irish poet of the late 20th Century. Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, Heaney is best known for metaphors, intense detail, and effective use of setting. His numerous volumes have covered a variety of topics, ranging from historical topics such as the Act of Union to rural Irish life and the current conflict in Northern Ireland. Heaney was one of the leading poets of the 1970s, with much of his work set in the rural Northern Ireland setting of his youth. He is well known for his sharp and sometimes violent language which described the tumultuous situation at the time. His first volume, Death of a Naturalist, dealt with farming and other natural settings. The first piece of this volume, "Digging," is especially significant in that establishes Heaney as a poet both in reality and symbolically: "Digging" symbolizes Heaney's departure from continuity by his choosing to be a poet rather than a farmer like his father, while also maintaining continuity through an extended metaphor in which Heaney suggests writing is his form of "digging.".
Heaney was born into a lower-class potato farming family in rural Northern Ireland in 1939. He began studying at Queen's University in 1957, and his first volume, Death of a Naturalist, in which "Digging" is included, was published in 1966. It is presumed that this poem takes place around the time Heaney decided to leave home to pursue an education. The speaker is in the house, looking out the window, watching his father cut turf. Immediately a distance between the two is established: while of age, the speaker is writing instead of working with his father. The difference in physical position .
Jones 2.
alludes to the difference in class position: the educated, middle-class writer versus the poor, peasant farmer.
Later the speaker recalls his grandfather doing the exact same work as his father.