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“Digging” by Seamus Heaney

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 prepositional phrase during a sentence,
reiterating the word to simply give the reader a sense of the mundane life his father is living. There
are no adverbs surrounding the word; simply put, the speaker evokes a sense of nothingness that is
associated with “digging” a hole in the ground, only to fill said hole with a potato and cover it back
up—a menial task for which he has no inclination. Again, Heaney repeats some phrases in order to
accentuate his aversion to the job of potato harvesting.

Lastly, Heaney implements extended metaphors throughout his poem to subtly convey his feelings
towards his father’s tradition. As stated earlier, the repetition of “digging” also connotes a deeper
meaning—the speaker, while also observing his father literally dig through the mud and peat,
figuratively digs through his memories of his family, recalling the days when he would help his
grandfather out in “Toner’s bog.”

In the second to last verse, the speaker alludes to revisiting the past by stating the “living roots
awaken in my head.” The roots, although they can refer to the physical roots in the ground, symbolize
the narrator’s family roots in potato farming, a culture that is associated with digging into the ground to
find food and money in the form of potatoes. In the end, the speaker ends the metaphor of digging,
noting he will “dig,” but not with the spade, but with his pen.

Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging” tells a tale of a man musing about his decision to leave behind
family convention. Heaney employs a series of images that convey the speaker’s feelings, repetition
to show the narrator’s dislike of potato harvesting, and metaphors to provide an underlying message
about tradition. In the end, the speaker is left commenting on the spade, his father and grandfather’s
tool of choice, while he himself chooses the pen.

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