Digging

Fiction | Poem | Adult

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Inheritance and Memory

At the heart of Heaney’s “Digging” is the weight of inheritance, illustrated by the labors of the speaker’s father and grandfather. Although the first stanza of the poem serves more as an introduction to the modern instruments and tools the speaker references (“the pen,” “the gun” [Line 2]), the second stanza opens with the first lapse into memory. The first detail the speaker takes note of is a sound, powerful in its familiarity: “Under my window, a clean rasping sound” (Line 3). The sound is reminiscent of a shovel, scraping and hissing along the ground, but it also gives rasping breath to a father that seems lost in some sense to the labors of the past. By linking the speaker, the speaker’s father, and the speaker’s grandfather, Heaney clearly indicates a line of descent and inheritance, unbroken even by time and change.

The memories in this poem are, in many ways, stronger and more alive than the speaker’s actual present. The speaker is, in at least one instance, overtaken by the influence of and yearning for the past: “He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep / To scatter new potatoes that we picked, / Loving their cool hardness in our hands” (Lines 12-14). Heaney’s use of collective pronouns in this section of the poem (“we,” “our”) indicates the strength of the memory. The speaker is overcome and seeks to re-join with the memory in a literal sense. Moreover, it is a “loving” (Line 14) exercise that the speaker references in doing so. The speaker, like Heaney himself, does not look back on the pastoral, domestic labors of the past as painful or belittling—the past, memory, is a protected place, natural and untouched in some way by the weight of the “pen” that “rests; snug as a gun” (Line 2) in the speaker’s hand.

The Pen, the Gun, and Violence

The opening and closing stanzas of the poem indicate an interesting thematic allusion to tools, weapons, and violence. By equating the “pen” with a “gun” (Line 2) at the beginning of the poem, Heaney establishes the idea of writing as a violent act. That comparison, followed so closely by a loving and beautiful description of the speaker’s father and grandfather digging with spades, another tool sometimes used as a weapon, illustrates a hierarchy of tools. The spades used by the father and grandfather feel more real than either the “pen” or the “gun” of Line 2, and the spades, despite being sharp, heavy instruments, are only ever used for one purpose in the poem: digging up soil. When this concept is broken down further, readers see that the acts of the father and grandfather were done by reason of subsistence. “Digging” was necessary for planting, for food, and for survival. Alternatively, the “pen,” heavy in the speaker’s hand as a “gun” (Line 2), seems like a lesser tool, or perhaps, a more dangerous tool. It accomplishes the same effect as the spade, but it also wields more figurative violence and power.

The speaker’s “pen” is like a gun (Line 2) in that it is a modern weapon used to make modern violence. It sustains the speaker’s livelihood, but there is a question of its worthiness. Though the speaker, and Heaney himself, is content to “dig” with the “pen” rather than the spade, the speaker’s yearning for the past, for the heavy, true weight of a shovel in hand is clear, implying a kind of inequality of tools. Ultimately, the “pen” (Line 2) is enough for the speaker, but his love for the past, and for the tools of the past, implies that the present, for all its attained knowledge and progress, is perhaps more violent and less “real” to the speaker than the pastoral labors of his past. He chooses to wield his pen, not as a pen or a gun, but as a spade, following the line of inheritance in a modern way.

“Digging” as a Literal and Figurative Act

The poem’s thematic undertones are first established in its title. “Digging” sets up the extended metaphor that defines the first major theme of the piece: though tools change over time, the act of “digging” is vital work, handed down from father to son, and now performed by the speaker in tandem with Heaney’s readers, who must figurately “dig” through the speaker’s memories to find a universal truth. In the first few lines, Heaney presents the poem’s focal point: “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun” (Lines 1-2). This set up is enhanced by the title, and the proximity of the opening couplet to the title ties together the poem’s present action (the speaker, remembering and writing) and the past that is being fondly remembered (the father and grandfather, digging.) By choosing to start the poem with the speaker and his tool, the pen, Heaney reveals that the title is not just relevant to the literal acts of “digging” being remembered, but the title is also an important clue as to what the speaker is doing with his pen, alluding to the speaker’s ultimate conclusion: “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it” (Lines 29-31). The repetition of the opening lines again at the poem’s conclusion highlights the cyclic, or inheritable, nature of the act of “digging.” Although the speaker states, “I’ve no spade to follow men like them” (Line 28), he still accepts his inheritance by “digging” deep into his memory with his chosen instrument.

In a sense, Heaney’s “Digging” observes multiple definitions of “digging,” layered one on top of another. The speaker, the primary source of the poem’s heart and narrative, is introduced at the beginning, and with him, the reader descends into a memory, “twenty years away” (Line 7), of the speaker’s father literally digging. At the poem’s center, the speaker momentarily is carried away into the past, joining his father. This memory draws the speaker further down again, into a deeper layer of memory, further away in time, of his grandfather digging. The word “digging” or “dig” appears five times in the poem, including the title, and for a poem of such short length, the concentrative use of the word is in itself an admission of underlying theme. “Digging” is more than just “digging,” it is a way of life, a necessity for the speaker and his forefathers that cannot be denied. Though the speaker cannot dig with a shovel, he also cannot help but to dig with his pen; it is the labor he has inherited from his father and the land to which they were both born.

The poem is arranged in such a way that each stanza represents a new layer of dirt to be uncovered and dissected by the speaker. Even the arrangement of the stanzas, seemingly haphazard with no official form, provides extra significance; their unevenness in length and line count appears patchy, perhaps representative of a spade unevenly breaking through layers of earth, over and over again, always searching for “the good turf” (Line 24).