Analysis

“Digging” is the first poem of Seamus Heaney’s debut collection of poetry, Death of a Naturalist. It was a breakthrough for him. In his own essay “Feeling into Words,” which was originally given as a lecture at the Royal Society of Literature in 1974, he said, “I wrote it in the summer of 1964, almost two years after I had begun to ‘dabble in verses.’ This was the first place where I felt I had done more than make an arrangement of words: I felt that I had let down a shaft into real life” (Heaney 15). “Real life” is evident through Heaney’s relationship with his father and grandfather and the major themes that “Digging” addresses such as tradition and customs, memory and reminiscence, and search for self. In “Digging,” Heaney* struggles between honoring and departing from his history and justifies his identity as a poet.

Heaney’s memories of the past comprise much of the body of his poem “Digging.” The poem begins in the present tense with Heaney writing and then looking out the window at his father digging in the garden below. The poem then changes into the past tense when Heaney begins recalling memories of his father and grandfather. He begins with a memory of his father digging for potatoes twenty years earlier and later recalls a similar memory of his grandfather cutting turf. It is clear that Heaney has fond memories of this and even helped out as a child by picking potatoes that his father dug up (lines 13-14) and bringing his grandfather milk while he worked (line 19). It is also evident, especially in the lines “By God, the old man could handle a spade./ Just like his old man” (lines 15-16), that he admired their skillful work. By including these memories and reminiscing on the traditions of his family, Heaney indicates why it is so hard for him to depart from his family history and choose a different path in life as a poet.

In “Digging,” Heaney also attempts to justify his own identity as a poet. From the very beginning,