Digging

By: 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.
Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA (/ˈʃeɪməs ˈhiːni/; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet,
playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.[1][2] Among his best-known
works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. Heaney was recognised as
one of the principal contributors to poetry during his lifetime. American poet Robert Lowelldescribed
him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John
Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age".[3][4] Robert Pinsky has stated that
"with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller."[5] Upon his death in
2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".[6]
He was born in the townland of Tamniaran between Castledawson and Toomebridge, Northern
Ireland. His family moved to nearby Bellaghy when he was a boy. He became a lecturer at St.
Joseph's College in Belfast in the early 1960s, after attending Queen's University and began to
publish poetry. He lived in Sandymount, Dublin, from 1976 until his death.[7] He lived part-time in the
United States from 1981 to 2006.
Heaney was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997, and its Poet in Residence from 1988 to
2006. From 1989 to 1994, he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In 1996, was made
a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 1998 was bestowed the title Saoi of
the Aosdána. Other awards that he received include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968),
the E. M. Forster Award(1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Golden Wreath of
Poetry (2001), the T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread Prizes(1996 and 1999).[3][4] In 2011, he
was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize and in 2012, a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin
Trust. His literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland.
He is buried at the Cemetery of St. Mary's Church, Bellaghy, Northern Ireland. The headstone bears
the epitaph "Walk on air against your better judgement", from one of his poems, "The Gravel
Walks".[8]
LESSON IN FOCUS: (REVIEW)

LITERARY CONTEXTS

A. Literary Context- pertains to the nature of the genre

B. Biographical Context-points the relation between the writer’s life and work
C. Linguistic Context- language used by the author to achieve an artistic effect
D. Sociocultural Context- intimate relationship between the work and what surrounds it—social condition,
culture, worldview, history

Seamus Heaney's poem "Digging" focuses on the narrator's desire to fit in with his family and
continue a family tradition. The poem begins with the watching his father digging in a flowerbed.
While watching his father dig, the narrator is reminded of how his father used to dig potatoes twenty
years before, and that his father's father also dug often. Throughout the poem, the narrator
reminisces about his memories of the past: his father's "straining rump among the flowerbeds", his
father "stooping in rhythm through potato drills", and his grandfather "nicking and slicing neatly,
heaving sods" (Heaney 6-22). These are the actions that his family has followed for generations, the
actions that have sustained the family through the years. But instead of following these actions and
continuing his family’s traditions, the narrator is watching from the sidelines, writing. Unlike his
forefathers, the narrator “[has] no spade to follow men like them”. So the narrator uses writing to
connect himself with his past. Instead of a shovel, the he has a pen. Instead of tree roots or
potatoes, he has "living roots” that “awaken in [the writer's] head" (27). The poem ends with the
lines, "The squat pen rests. / I'll dig with it." (29-30). The narrator recognizes the futility of trying to
connect himself with his ancestors through the traditional way, but has resolved his personal dispute
by using writing as a metaphor for digging and building upon the similarities between the two
seemingly unrelated actions. Digging serves as a way for him to bridge his past with his present.
Just as his father and grandfather before him had shovels as tools for hard labor, the narrator has a
pen. The pen symbolizes the son's decision to continue the tradition, in a way that he is able to
accomplish and a way that allows him to express himself and follow his desires. Instead of being
lost, his tradition is transformed from one of physical labor to one of mental labor.
Through “Digging”, Heaney shows that it is possible to achieve a balance between the
obligations we have to our family, our traditions, and our past and our desires as individuals. As we
grow older and continue our lives, we need not forget about and abandon our past. As we become
interconnected with the rest of the world in the modern age, it is easy to let traditions
disappear. New environments and technological developments often make it difficult to continue our
traditions as they were in the past. The same can be said about the communities that we grow up
in. It may be easy, when a new community appears, to jump in headfirst and sever all connections
with our pasts. However, traditions form an integral part of our identities as humans, and are a
central part of who we are.

Guide Questions:

1 – Identify the region of the sample text (Digging)

2 – What is the element and genre of the sample text?

3 – What are the regions involve in the sample texts for the quarter?

4 – What are the genres/ description of the sample texts?

5 – What are the distinctive feature of the texts according to the world region it belongs
to?

FORMAT FOR LITERARY ANALYSIS

TITLE OF TEXT

AUTHOR OF THE TEXT

AUTHOR’S BACKGROUND

LITERARY CONTEXT

LITERARY GENRE

ELEMENTS

MEANING