In Digging we have three characters: the author (the son), his father, and grandfather. The author is clearly making a comparison of his way of life and his fathers" way of life. He talks more about his father and grandfather than he does about himself but his subject is clearly stated that he is a writer, while his father and grandfather are farmers. He makes the comparison by first relapsing into his fathers" line of work. Then the author goes on into talking about his grandfather and his line of work. At first we are given details as the author seeing his writing as less significant than the hard laboring of his father and grandfather. But at some point through the poem, the author goes through a transition to where he realizes that writing is his farming, and that the pen is his spade. The only clues that the author gives us about him and his writing are by the first and last verse. But the author makes it clear that his writing is in no way compared to the labor of his father and grandfather in the first few verses, but then comes to a different realization by the end.
We are introduced into the scene with the author sitting at his desk in his room, when he is distracted by his father outside working in the flowerbed. He then goes into describing each detail that he sees and hears: clear rasping sound, when the spade sinks into gravelly ground, till his straining rump, stooping in rhythm through potato drills. He describes it as an art and not just as somebody working in the flowerbed. By this I take it as the author showing great respect for his father and what he does. The author is then brought back to the days when he helped his father. In verse four he goes into such a detail as to think that the feeling that he gets from it lets him know he is alive and loves farming. By verse five he tells us that his father is really good at what he does and makes a comparison of him to his grandfather, whom also is really good at farming.
Within the poem, we see three generations of men taking up a form of "digging.... This is evident in the quote, "My father, digging. ... In "Digging," the narrator struggles with his identity in connection to his family. ... The narrator in "Digging" loves his father and grandfather to a great extent. ... "My father digging, I look down" (5). ...
In the poem "Digging," the speaker's success is held within his identity. The speaker of "Digging" struggles with his identity in relationship to his family. ... Overall, "Digging" represents the speaker's journey toward honoring and departing from his history and finally feeling that his choice of being a writer is acceptable. ... The writer in "Digging" is also a pioneer; he is the first person in generations to use a pen as a digging tool, instead of the physical labor that is done by his father and grandfather with a spade. ... However, the writer i...
The poem "Digging" (533) by Seamus Heaney is about a person looking out of a window at their Father digging. ... Then the poem goes on to describe the feelings and emotions that the individual is feeling while the digging is occurring. ... Digging!" ... On a surface level "Digging by Seamus Heaney was not all that interesting. ... But to follow his own path in life In conclusion I realized that "Digging" is a very complex poem which can be interpreted in a variety of different ways....
In "Digging", the poet detail the art of digging, and says, "By God, the old man could handle a spade./ Just like his old man." ... Digging is what he knows and understands, and he hold onto it as a foundation. ... Another poem that details Heaney's youth and his father's digging is "Follower". ... "Digging" and "Follower" by Seamus Heaney, dissect the notion of "digging". The poems" show that "digging" is part of the Irish culture and "place". ...
Digging, is but one of the many poems from his collection, "Death of a Naturalist". ... In the first stanza of Digging Seamus introduces to us his pen. ... Seamus is witnessing his "father, digging" through flowerbeds. ... Such words give the imagery that potato digging was a hard and rough job. ... Heaney's second memory is one of his grandfather digging turf on Toner's bog. ...
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." ... 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. ... The privilege of higher education serves a...
I will compare the two poems of Seamus Heaney,Digging and Death of a Naturalist. ... In "Digging"the words,"my grandfather", refers that it was a childhood memory because, his grandfather would have died, when the poet is an adult.Both of the poems have metaphors, in "Death of a Naturalist", he used metaphors, to widen the imagination of the child he was and in "Digging", he used metaphors to also widen the memories he is talking about.The kind of metaphors in "Digging" are: "The squat pen rests," "bends low,comes up twenty years away", and "when the spade sinks",these metaphors were also ...
In the poems "Digging," by Seamus Heaney and "Those Winter Sundays," by Robert Hayden, both write about their father in reflective poems about childhood. ... When Seamus Heaney also writes about his father, in the poem "Digging," he speaks about his fathers work. ... Digging.... In "Digging" Seamus uses metaphoric tools to represent his connection with his father. "When the spade sinks into the gravely ground: My father, digging. ...
In "Digging" by Seamus Heaney, Heaney compares his work as a writer to the work of his father and grandfather, both farmers who work the land. To Heaney, hard work is the kind of work his father and grandfather demonstrate in the fields; work that is physical and involves hard manual labor like "digging" up potatoes and turf. ... In "Digging", Heaney feels that his writing is not as valuable as the manual labor his father and grandfather engage in when farming. ...
