Essays for school

The speaker's admiration for family - Digging (1966)

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English

May 18, 2021

The speaker's admiration for family

Digging (1966) is a poem by Seamus Heaney. The speaker of the poem is a writer sitting down at his desk and he is looking at his father working in the flowerbeds outside of his window. The writer begins to reminisce about his family's past, the generations of work and labor of digging present in his family. There is a chronological build of the three generations throughout the poem: himself, his father, then his grandfather. The poem begins with the speaker as he watches his father, and is plunged into the memories he has of his father laboring in the potato fields, then he shifts his memories again and he sees his grandfather digging in the peat fields. Both of these very important men in his life have worked in the fields, with their shovels but the narrator does not follow the same path. He is a writer, he looks at his grandfather and father and admires their work and the way they had provided for their family. He admires their dedication to their craft and the persistence that they had to harbor to continue doing something so hard. His father could dig and work so much, his grandfather even more so. While he does admire their work he is not a farmer, he has no shovel to dig with instead he has a pen and he thanks the past generations of his family for giving him this opportunity to write. He will not follow their career but he will share their dedication and persistence in his own profession.

The first stanza, we are introduced to the speaker looking out the window at his father who is digging in the garden whilst holding a pen in his hand prepared to write. The speaker says "Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests; snug as a gun." The speaker employs a simile between two objects. A pen and a gun. While the pen may be seen as a simple and passive instrument when the writer compares it to a gun it gives off a very shocking factor. It evokes an imagery of power that the speaker has, comparing his instrument to one of power. The speaker is sitting down preparing to write something down. The writer implies that the pen that he can use to write is just as powerful as a gun, meaning that words that he can create can have great power and also consequences. This will bring importance to the text he is about to write. There is also the employment of an alliteration of the sound "u". Later, the speaker says "But I've no spade to follow men like them." While the narrator seems to carry much power in his current profession, there is a hint of regret in his tone. He has idolized these people his entire life and because of them he has been given many more opportunities. This passage clearly portrays how the speaker will not follow the path seemingly laid out before him by his family, instead he will walk his own.

The speaker, in his emotional journey looks at the past of his family. He looks at the work of his father and then digs further back a generation to his grandfather. He watches his father in the garden and thinks of all his hard work and now transitions to his grandfather. He continues his very deep admiration for his predecessors. The speaker says "By God," which is an exclamation. In this part of the passage, he is showing true his undying admiration and enthusiasm. Next he says"The old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man." The speaker references the spade which has been the tool used in his family's work for generations and this shows how the work has been handed down in his family for a very long time. This passage of the poem marks where the speaker is digging further into the past and his memories transitioning from the speaker's father to his grandfather. There is a repetition of the words "old man" which further elaborates the passing from one generation to another. These quotations are also part of their own entire stanza, making up only two lines. What the speaker is trying to convey must be very important for the information to be concentrated in it's very own stanza while the others are much longer.

Family and heritage are things that the speaker holds very close to his heart. This notion is emphasized when he says"Through living roots awaken in my head." The author employs a personification of "roots'' in his head. This could represent the importance of family that the speaker is suddenly coming to realize. The roots are the past generations and the history of his family, seeing his father and grandfather work so hard to preserve the family and their work the speaker cannot help but admire them even more. The closing statement of the poem is "Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests./ I'll dig with it." This is a refrain from the very first line of the poem but while the writer did convey a message that his work gave him power at the beginning, in the end of the poem he does not try to convey such a message, instead the final lines in the poem seem more of a promise to be like his ancestors even if he does not follow their profession. There is the use of a metaphor when the speaker says that he will use the pen to dig. The instrument that he uses is different from the spade used by his father and his father's father yet he will still put in the same effort and labor into his work, the ethic is the same.

He ends the history of his family's digging labor because he is not like the people that came before him, he was given opportunities that his father and grandfather did not have. Instead of being a farmer he can be a powerful writer.