Digging Analysis

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Recommended: Themes of digging by seamus heaney

The poem “Digging” by Seamus Heaney begins with a man who is at his desk with a pen in his hand ready to write. The speaker becomes distracted when he hears his father outside who is working in a garden. He then starts to day dream about old memories of his father working in potato fields, which occurred many years back when the speaker was younger. The memories become more visual as he goes into detail about his grandfather when he worked hard as a peat harvester. There seems to be other work going on in the background of this flashback as well. After the speaker snaps out of his daze, he gets back to work with his pen poised in his hand. The beginning of the poem focuses on the speaker’s hand, but more specifically, the pen. “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.” (1-2) Although the speaker hints at focusing on his hand, he suddenly shifts the topic towards the pen. A simile is used in the second line to convey how both a pen and gun are tools that are to be held by a hand. In the second line, he correlates the words snug and gun. I tend to think that writing is somewhat peaceful to read, which is why positive thoughts come to mind when I hear the word “snug”. Yet, the speaker quickly contradicts the beginning of the simile into more of a negative way with the word “gun”. The speaker seems to be creating a type of assonance pattern within the second line. “pen rests” and “snug as a gun” each have the same vowel patterns going on, which almost seems to create an internal rhyme. Within the second stanza, someone seems to be digging with a spade, which is also referred to as a shovel. The shovel is making a “rasping” sound when it digs into the ground. The term “rasping” allows one to imagine a sh... ... middle of paper ... ...er, but the tools that each man carry within each generation are different. In previous generations, the tool used in hands was the spade, which was used for digging, whereas the speaker’s tool in hand is the mighty pen. The speaker seems to have circled back to the beginning and recites the first two lines of the poem. Although he does not have a spade in hand, the grandson still follows in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by “digging” with his pen. The term “digging” refers to the hard work and efficiency that was put in to get the job done. “I’ll dig with it” (31) Although the speaker is different from past generations in how he digs, he is similar because he is trying to get to the bottom of things. Past generations want to dig into the ground, but the speaker wants to dig into his own roots and past to give recognition to his father and grandfather.

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