Digging Analysis

“Digging” Analysis

In many families, fathers take pride in receiving remarks regarding their sons such as “He’s a chip off the ol’ block” or “like father like son,” often exalting the sons who have followed in their fathers’ vocational footsteps. In “Digging,” by Seamus Heaney, the speaker describes the quintessential potato farming tradition that his father and grandfather partake in, while the speaker himself observes through a window barrier. Seamus Heaney, through his use of imagery, repetition, and extended metaphors, reveals his feelings in straying away from Irish tradition to follow his own path in writing. In his poem, Heaney utilizes imagery to further emphasize the speaker’s action in choosing a different job than potato farming. The speaker begins at a windowsill, with a “squat pen” resting “as snug as a gun” in his hand. Heaney’s description connotes a sense of defense, almost as if the narrator sees himself as an old wilderness-survival junkie, sitting on the porch with a gun to defend his property from government officials, but in “Digging,” the speaker defends his choice in jobs. Later on in the poem, the speaker describes the actions of a potato harvester, who must endure the “cold smell of potato mold [and] the squelch and slap of soggy peat.” Heaney’s images of mold and soggy mud convey the speaker’s true feeling and apprehension toward the sickening, gross environment in which his father and grandfather work. In the same way, Heaney’s repetition further alludes to the speaker’s need and desire to write. In the first and last stanzas of the poem, the speaker repeats the same sentence: “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests.” As a starting point in the poem, the speaker directly jumps to his comfort zone—describing his love for putting pen to paper, yet as an ending note, the narrator reemphasizes his possession of not only the pen, but of his life choices. Also, Heaney often uses the word “digging” as a separate