Digging by Seamus Heaney

Digging by Seamus Heaney

Digging is the one of poem that categorized as an Irish poetry. Written in twentieth century, Seamus Heaney tries to appear how to describe Ireland by his time. In this poem, we can see the situation that describe by Heaney about his life and the culture of his country.

In the first stanza, the speaker said that he/she is holding a pen as he holding a gun. By this stanza, we found a clear simile appears in this poem. The author uses a simile in the beginning of poem. He compares to holding a pen and a gun that we don't know what the meaning of why he compares a pen and a gun in this poem.

By second stanza, we knew that the speaker in this poem is a single speaker because, by reading the poem, we saw the word "my" that point to the single speaker.

In this stanza, the author tells that the speaker hear to the clear sound and sound of spade that collided with the ground. He saw his father who digging the ground from his window. So that, from his room by the window, as we read in the first stanza, we can say that the speaker is in the room holding the pen like he holding the gun. He heard the window below, the sound of the spade that collided with the ground. He saw the father who makes the sound at the window below.

Alliteration also appears in the second stanza when we read in the "spade sinks into gravely ground". The repetition of consonant sound also makes a power to describe Ireland in this poem.

"Rasping sound" and "gravely ground". We can identify it as onomatopoeic words. It means these words depict the image of the act of digging. The word 'Gravelly' contains a number of meanings. "Gravelly" is symbolic in that it refers to the One Crop Law that was imposed on Ireland by England. This law was later blamed for the famine that struck Ireland when the potato crop failed. Heaney shows the ground as 'grave like' because it was the physical cause for the famine. The soil retained too much water resulting in the potato crop rotting. This left the Irish with no crop to eat. The message in the word 'gravelly' is therefore ambiguous and educates the reader of the hardships Irish farmers faced from the English oppressors. By that symbol, we already knew how Ireland is described in this poem.

In the third stanza, the speaker tells that he saw his father bends his body low when digging into gravelly ground among the flowerbeds. When his father was digging, the rhythm of potato drills makes him remember his memory about twenty years ago.

Watching his father digging in the flowerbeds brings back his memories of rhythm when his father was digging. "Rhythm" here is intended to parallel the plight of the Irish with an image of a slave as part of a chain gang doing hard labour. During slavery, the slaves would create songs and sing them to the rhythm of their work. This would break the monotony and also alleviate some of their stress. Here Heaney is saying that the Irish were captives and their unfavourable task was to cultivate the potato fields. By his memory, the author inserts the information about Ireland that happened at the time.

In the next stanza, the speaker tells us about his father who uses the boot on the lug and digging as he can. His father digging