"Digging" by Seamus Heaney

Mahmut Deniz

4th May, 2009

Digging by Seamus Heaney

Most of the poets’ poems have been focused on the reflection of their own life. The remembrance of his mother land and his ancestors, who worked hard to make a living, must have been very important for Seamus Heaney that he wrote his poem “Digging” about it. Born and lived in a family farm, Irish poet Seamus Heaney, in his poem “Digging” gives a very good understanding of hard labour of his ancestors in the past with juxtaposing his career as a writer. The poem is about the recollection of Heaney’s youth as a boy watching his father and grandfather working on the field. By using some repetitions, onomatopoeia, alliteration and simile, Heaney lets reader feel the moment vividly and with a deep sense.     

            First of all, “digging” is a masculine work which needs physical power to be done. While we read the poem, we can see the use of “digging” many times. As it is repeated, it makes its meaning stronger, so that the reader can realize how hard Heaney’s ancestor worked to make a living. The event takes place indoor:

“Under my window a clean rasping sound

When the sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down”

Narrator is watching his father indoor as he states in the second stanza’s first line: “Under my window”, while his father is digging. Poem goes on with his father’s hard work as Heaney describes the situation “till his straining rump among the flowerbeds / Bends low, comes up twenty years away”. The father’s hard work is stressed with “straining rump” and with the “comes up twenty years away” so, we understand his father’s twenty years of hard work.

“Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun” Obviously, it is speaker himself who is writing the poem as he says “Between my finger and my thumb” while watching outside. He uses a simile in the second line of first stanza: “snug as a gun”. He may have used the word in a negative or positive meaning. It is an important line, because the simile resembles the “pen” to “a gun”. Guns were used mainly in negative way in the past and the present, but should we think it as the way it is or think throughout the poem and guess what he tries to say? Of course, when we look through poem as a whole, we understand Heaney’s intention in using this simile. Heaney’s use of simile can be deduced from the whole poem, as powerful as gun, as he tries to prove the power of his “pen” which is referred to education. He uses his pen as powerful as a gun, which makes also his thoughts and ideas powerful, as well. Furthermore, the gun is pointed down “squat” like a “spade”, so even in reality, when the gun is pointed down, it means it will not harm anyone, but it will also not lose its power, as it is still ready to fire, and the “gun” was used like a “spade” which is also pointed down while digging, so the poet, also, implies the juxtaposition of his ancestor’s work with his own life.

Another harmonic approach to the poem comes from his use of onomatopoeia. The reflection of sounds that the tools make is very effective to make readers feel it deeply and vividly. For example, “… a clean rasping sound / When the spade sinks into gravelly ground” make us feel like we are in the place of poet himself and listening to the sound, or “squelch and slap” the moment when the spade hits the soft ground. Another example of onomatopoeia which comes at the same time with alliteration and which is stressed to show how professional his grandfather is: “curt cuts”. These words imply that his grandfather does not do his job amateurishly but in an aesthetic way, that is to say, not clumsily or strongly, but in a smooth and accurate way. Furthermore, “curt cuts” is a good example of alliteration along with onomatopoeia, as both of the words begins with the same letters. So the professional use of both techniques at the same time can also be resembled to his grandfather’s professional work. These aspects of poems also show us how effective they are in giving the feelings deeply in a short verse, because, for instance, prose would approach the subject mostly in a straight way to makes us only know, but not feel.

The final line is very important as it is the point where writer compares himself to his grandfather and father, not by their hard work with the “spade”, but with his pen as he says “I’ll dig with it”. With the last line, reader can get also possible important messages that poet meant to give. Firstly, we know that in his last line, poet implies that he will help them, because he will do what his father and grandfather did in another method. They did it with their spades but Heaney will do it with his pen. The poem starts with a typical rural life of an Irish family, and ends with the writer’s current position, that’s, the poem ends the same way it begins with one more line: “I’ll dig with it”. So we also witness the change from rural culture to modern one. Heaney appreciates what his ancestor did, but he knows that he cannot do what they did and he chooses to do it in another way, with a pen, that’s education. By paralleling his life with his father and grandfather’s one, Heaney shows the respect to his heritage and inspiration that he got from them. As a poet his position is high enough in modern society, but he sees himself like his father and grandfather who worked in the field with their spades. His ancestors used the spade to plant vegetables and he will use his pen to plant words to reap his poems.

To conclude, I can say that Heaney’s professional reflection of past period to our time is very effective in a way to let us think that one should consider his/her ancestors’ hard work as important as the way we use in the present, that’s, using our pen as their “spade”. Furthermore, Heaney’s use of onomatopoeia, repetition, simile and alliteration gives the poem the most important functions that separate it from a simple prose and gives us the feelings as close as it can be. The message of the poem in my opinion is that as the time passes and changes, the spade turns into pen and does the same job what spade did. His ancestors worked hard to make a living; it is now time for the new generation to use their pens as effective as their ancestors used their spades.