“DIGGING” – POEM - SUMMARY
“Digging” is a poem written by Seamus
Heaney. He is an Irish Poet, Playwright and translator. Haney was considered
one of principal contributors to poetry during his lifetime. The poem starts
off in the present, moves into the past and then returns to the present and
hints at the future towards the end.
While holding a pen between his
finger and his thumb, the poet reflects upon the rural history of his family,
the men who worked in the field. The poem starts with the poet’s description of
his father working under the window with his spade. His father was digging the
garden. The notable fact is that the speaker holds a pen like a gun (which is a
symbol of the power of the present) while the spade used by his father is a
thing of the past. Gradually, looking at his father, the poet goes back to the
memories of twenty years past. In the past his father was digging in the potato
drills. The poet also used to involve in gathering of the potatoes that were
dug by his father. He still remembers their coolness and hardness. The poet
says that his father was able to handle the spade just like his father (poet’s
grandfather). Now, the memory of the poet further shifts to his childhood days
when he saw his grandfather digging a turf. His grandfather used to cut more
turf in a day than any other man in their area. The poet also informs how he
took a bottle of milk for his grandfather and how he drank the milk and
immediately went back to his work. The
poet presents the rural setting by describing the visions and sounds of the
field while his grandfather was working. Thus he remembers all the past days of
work in the field both by his father and grandfather.
The poet says that now he has no
spade to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. The family
roots are cut metaphorically. But, the poet says that he too can dig with his
pen. Thus, the poem presents both nostalgic feeling of the poet as well as the
differences between the occupations from one generation to the other
generation. While the past generations used spade to dig the field to do
cultivation, the present generation uses the mighty pen to enlighten the
society with writings.
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Noojilla
Srinivas, Lecturer in English, Govt. Degree College, Alamuru. Ph: 7981862200
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