As the poem progresses, Heaney begins to go into the past and describe the characters father. The reader sees how the father was a farmer because of the fact that he is “digging”. There are many harsh sounding words such as “rasping”, “gravelly ground” and “digging” give a harsher sound the overall idea of farming. It shows how it was hard work, and maybe because of this, the character sees the strength in his father. However despite this, there is also an idea of how farming was not all about brute strength and how it was also about technique and delicacy. The imagery created by the words “When the spade sinks” and “stooping in rhythm” is that of the spade just easily and neatly going into the ground to do its work. It portrays how farming also requires some flow to it. This can be seen as juxtaposition because even though farming is tough and laborious, there is also an element of delicacy and flow.
The reader soon starts to see the respect that the character has for his father. describes his father with great admiration for his strength and skill as a farmer. The character describes how the careful and deliberate way his father cuts into the earth with his spade and makes the idea of digging sound like a very skilled craft. He describes how his father worked through the words "The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft/ Against the inside knee was levered firmly." The use of the word “course” describes how it is not an easy job and that it requires people to be tough, however, the use of the word “nestled” creates an image of a person being a master at farming. The word “nestled” has a sound of elegance to wwhat the characters father is doing. The fourth stanze mainly portrays the respect that the character has for the strength and skill that his father posesses.
The fifth stanzais in the middle of the poem and this is important because it describes the shift from the character talking about his father, to talking about his grandfather. From this stanza, the reader can see the syle used by Seamus Heaney to write this poem. This poem is basically written in a retrospective way in which the charcter describes himself in the beginiing, but then changes to talking about other people in his family. However, the character later moves into the past to describe his father and him being a farmer. This style contunues to the fifth stanza when the character shifts his thoughts from his father to his grandfather and his career, which was also farming. The poem keeps on going back into the future, and this could be seen as how the character is ‘digging’ into his past and finding about his family’s tradtions and what they used to do.
The reader can see that the character hold much respect for his grandfather because the charcter describes his grandfather as a very skilled man. He describes his grandfather to be able to “cut more turf in one day/Than any other man…”. This shows how the character’s grandfather was also very skilled at ‘digging’ just like the character’s father. The reader also understands how dedicated the grandfather was to his work. When the charcter brought the grandfather some milk, the grandfather “straightened up/To drink it, then fell to right away…”. Also, The character describes the idea of ‘diggin’ as being practised with great expertise by his grandfather; again, Seamus Heaney uses words that are precise and effective, as he describes his grandfather's skill in "Nicking and slicing neatly". The reader can see that the way the gradfateher is described is similar to the way the father is descrbed. Through the words “going down and down” the reader obtains a imagery of ruthm, a rhythm that the character’s father also possesed. This goes to show that the grandfather and the father were alike and how they continued their family tradtion. Now that the reader sees what the family did in the past, he can also see how the character in the poem is divided from his family in the sense that he does not farm.
In the final parts of the poem, the character begins to realize how his father and his gradfather carreid on the family tradtion of farming, and how he broke away from it. He views his father and gradnfather as great men and it can be seen that the cahracter thinks that he cannot do what they did; he cannot follow them. This can be seen through the words “But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.”. The words “men like them” shows how respectful he is of his grandfather and father, also shows how the charactecer himself is different from them. As the reader already knows, the character is not going to be ‘diggin’, but rather he is going to be writing.
The poem is full of the many sounds of work. The hard 'g' sounds of "digging", "gravelly ground", "snug", "lug" and "soggy" have an onomatopoeic effect in making a picture that describes the sound of the spade sinking into the hard ground. If the character’s father and grandfather were skilled with the spade, the character himself is skilled with the pen. And this idea can be seen throughout the whole last stanza. The character describes how he is a writer, and how his tool is his pen. His grandfather and father dug with the spade or the shovel, the main character in the poem is going to use his pen to dig; dig into his past and use it to write elegantly.
This poem revolves around the idea of a person looking back into the past and realizing how he has chosen a different, however not completely different, path than his ancestors. The character can also be seen as Seamus Heaney himself, and him looking back onto his family and thinking about how he has choesen to be a poet rather than a farmer. Heaney can be seen as linking his family’s past and their skills, to his own present and his skills with his pen. Even though the idea of digging with shovels can be seen as different from digging with a pen, the idea of the tool being used very skillfully is parallel to both.