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Digging
Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner’s bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down For the good turf.Digging. The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.
Summary and Analysis:
"Digging" opens Seamus Heaney's first collection and declares his intention as a poet. The
poem begins with the speaker, who looks upon himself, his pen posed upon his paper, as he
listens to the noise of his father digging outside the window. The speaker looks down, both
away from and at his father, and describes a slip in time; his father remains where he is, but the poem slips twenty years into the past, indicating the length of his father's career as a farmer. The speaker emphasizes the continuity of his father's movement, and the moment shifts out of the present tense and into the past. The speaker then changes his focus to his father's tools, saying, "The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft/Against the inside knee was levered firmly." These lines, describing how his father's shovel fits against his boot and leg, echo the first lines of the poem, which describe the speaker's fingers around his pen. The speaker then describes the picking of the potatoes using the pronoun "we," indicating that other characters populate this memory; possibly this refers to Heaney's siblings or his family in general. The tone is reverential toward the potatoes and the work. The poem then breaks back into couplet form: "By God, the old man could handle a spade./Just like his old man." This part of the poem feels less formal than the lines that come before it, more like something a person might say out loud to another. The speaker commits personally his story with an oath ("By God"), emphasizing his personal connection to rural Ireland. In the next lines of the poem, the speaker describes his grandfather as a strong digger who dug for fuel. He recalls approaching his grandfather with a bottle of milk as a child; his grandfather downed the milk and returned to work with more vigor than ever. This moment clearly still stands out to the speaker as an example of his grandfather's hard work and skill. The language here is precise and mimics the sound of digging in its bobbing rhythm and with phrases like "nicking and slicing" and "going down and down."
several stanzas. This expression seems to burst from the speaker naturally, suggesting that he truly feels impressed by his father's and grandfather's skill. By bringing his grandfather into the poem, the speaker makes clear that he is talking about something beyond just the dichotomy between his own career and his father's. He appears to celebrate the way of life that his father and grandfather, to an extent, shared, and the nostalgia represented in this poem suggests that the speaker's feelings toward his career as a writer are not cut-and-dry. The next stanza is longer than any of those that come before it, and it works to describe the speaker's grandfather. The speaker asserts that his grandfather cut "more turf in a day/Than any other man on Toner’s bog." Though the speaker is very firm in his characterization of his grandfather, this assertion has a slightly childlike tone, suggesting that the speaker still sees his father and grandfather through the adoring eyes of a child. Furthermore, the speaker's grandfather dug for turf, a source of fuel, while the speaker's father dug for potatoes. The speaker then outlines a day when he brought his grandfather "milk in a bottle/Corked sloppily with paper." This image evokes the pastoral landscape in which the speaker grew up. The stanza ends with the lines, "He straightened up/To drink it, then fell to right away/Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods/Over his shoulder, going down and down/For the good turf. Digging." The language here moves rhythmically and smoothly for a number of lines, mimicking the movement of digging. This stanza also quietly revives rhyme in the poem. The lines "My grandfather cut more turf in a day/Than any other man on Toner’s bog" rhyme with the lines "To drink it, then fell to right away/Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods" with several lines that do not rhyme between and around them. Why the speaker returns to rhyme is not entirely clear, but the return reminds the reader of the speaker's specific line of work, as a poet. By separating the word "Digging" into its own sentence, the speaker makes the action a mythical gesture. Digging is beyond his own reach, it seems, so to an extent he idealizes it. However, he seems to believe that he can reach the same transcendental place through his own hard work as his forbearers did through theirs. The next stanza, the second to last stanza in the poem, reads, "The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap/Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge/Through living roots awaken in my head." The speaker, using lots of alliteration to evoke the sounds and smells he associates with digging, winds through those sensations and, at nearly its end, pulls the reader back into the present tense, paralleling how those sensations bring the speaker back to the past. "But I’ve no spade to follow men like them," he continues. This moment could indicate a disheartening direction, but the speaker does not take any time to consider the merits of writing as a skill versus the merits of digging. He seems to consider them absolutely equal. Those "living roots" could be interpreted as a metaphorical reference to the speaker family, his living roots. Of course, he describes them to describe how they are cut through; this, appropriately, seems like a reference to the speaker's choice to move away from the farming occupation.
The final stanza begins by repeating the first stanza exactly: "Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests." But instead of comparing the pen to a gun, this time he simply says, "I'll dig with it." One important part of this image is that he says he will use his own tools, his pen, to dig; his point is not that digging is meaningful when it is like writing, but that writing is meaningful when it is like digging. Both actions are sacred to the speaker. Important Explanatory Passages:
- Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. This couplet, which starts the poem, seems to indicate a certain poetic formality that the rest of the poem may follow, for the two lines rhyme in a simple, familiar fashion. The first line is iambic, and the second line starts with iambs as well. The phrase "snug as a gun" breaks that rhythm by using a trochee, or reversing the syllabic emphasis that had been steady until this point; even the break out of pentameter is not something uncommon in a metered poem, so this first stanza seems to indicate that the rest of the poem will follow a similar form, meter, and rhyme scheme, perhaps also in couplets. However, the rest of the poem contrasts with these lines by not following suit. This choice to start one way and then shift into another may parallel the way the speaker has broken away from his family's line of work. It could also suggest that the speaker is more concerned with the subject matter of his writing than the form.
- My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. This is the moment where the speaker slips into the past; he finds himself twenty years earlier, watching his father dig potatoes. He works now among flowerbeds, but he farmed potatoes when the speaker was young.
- My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner’s bog. In this moment the speaker marvels at his grandfather's strength and calls him the most efficient man on the bog where he worked. This may be an exaggeration, but it demonstrates the speaker's conviction about his family's hardworking nature. Furthermore, by referring to the bog by name and without further explanation, the speaker pulls us in to the world of his family history, giving us intimate access to the memory of the speaker's grandfather.
- He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
important roles in the speaker's memory). The bottle of milk that the speaker brings his grandfather emphasizes the importance of sustenance through sources like food, but the speaker's role carrying the milk tells the readers that family plays an important part in the idea of sustenance: sustaining a family is the goal of work, but it is also the foundation upon which every person builds his or her career.
Manual labor
This poem, though its descriptions of farm work are visceral and precise, portrays farm work and digging romantically. Though the work is clearly strenuous, the speaker does not mention the toll it may have taken upon his father and grandfather. This may signify some oversight on the part of the speaker, but perhaps the speaker deliberately focuses on the work ethic and strength of his family members, instead of the cost of those attributes.
Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
An unnamed person tells the poem from a first-person perspective; whether
or not Heaney means for the speaker to be himself is not clear.
Form and Meter
This poem follows no specific form or meter.
Metaphors and Similes
"The squat pen rests; snug as a gun" (simile)
Alliteration and Assonance
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Throughout this poem Heaney uses alliteration to express the physical nature
of digging; this is a little ironic, since the speaker himself does not dig and
notes that he is a writer, not a farmer. He uses repeated "s" sounds in phrases
like "squelch and slap/Of soggy peat" to imitate the squelching and slapping
that he describes. The phrase "curt cuts of an edge" also mimics the very
thing it describes with its sound. Repeated "g" sounds replicate the grinding
sounds of digging.
Irony
The irony in this poem is that the speaker gives a detailed description of the
process of digging while acknowledging that, unlike his father and his
grandfather, he is not himself a digger.
Genre
Poetry
Setting
The poet describes himself and describes a landscape where his father and
grandfather both work, linking landscapes in the present, twenty years before,
and even before that (when his grandfather worked)
Tone
The tone of this poem is wistful yet firmly rooted in the present as well as the
past.
Protagonist and Antagonist
This poem does not have a clear antagonist; however, the speaker, his father,
and his grandfather are all central to the poem.
Major Conflict
The major in conflict in "Digging" seems to arise from the contrast between
the poet's work in the present and his ancestor's work in the past.
Climax
This poem has no clear climax, but its tension comes to a head when the
speaker describes his grandfather, who could "cut more turf in a day/Than
any other man on Toner’s bog," drinking the milk his grandchild, the speaker,
has brought him and then falling back to digging. These images "awaken" in
the head of the speaker, who clearly feels a very physical connection to the
action of digging. He uses this memory to shed light on how his position as a
writer allows him to connect viscerally to his memories of his father and
grandfather, yet that same position also sets him apart from those men.
Foreshadowing
The poem does not directly use foreshadowing, but the speaker says, "By
God, the old man could handle a spade./Just like his old man." This suggests
that the speaker will follow in the footsteps of those who come before him, if
not in his choice of tool, in his mastery of his chosen tool.
Understatement
Allusions
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Personification
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
