‘Digging’ is very much like ‘Follower’, in the sense that it shows how the young Heaney looked up to his elders - in this case both father and grandfather. Seeing his father (now old) “straining” to dig “flowerbeds”, the poet recalls him in his prime, digging “potato drills”. And even earlier, he remembers his grandfather, digging peat. He cannot match “men like them” with a spade, but he sees that the pen is (for him) mightier, and with it he will dig into his past and celebrate them. Heaney challenges the stereotype of ‘Paddy with a spade.’ The stereotype contains some truth - Irishmen are justifiably well known for
Jarvis transcends these petty emotions, choosing to embrace his son’s views of the natives. So, he shows kindness and forgiveness to Kumalo, a man trying his best to mend a broken family. Not only does he forgive Kumalo, Jarvis actively tries to help Ndothsheni, sending them milk, an irrigation expert, and rebuilding their church
The Spade and the Pen: The Passion of Life In the poem “Digging”, the author, Seamus Heaney, recalled his father and grandfather’s painstaking, yet rewarding work on growing potatoes and cutting turf. The persistence and passion emanating from the author’s father and his grandfather inspires him to a passion of writing. Through an implicit metaphor, the sentence at the end of the poem: “I’ll dig with it” (31) suggests that the author’s “squat pen” is his “spade”, and the purpose of that metaphor is to expresses his determination of using the pen as a spade to record life and sticking to it forever. At the start of the poem, the speaker emphasizes the importance of a pen to him- just like a gun towards a soldier by using gun as a vehicle of pen (2), the “spade”—which was an important tool to his fathers before him, in the author’s case is his pen. The spade symbolizes the passion the author’s forefathers had in their work and the passion the author has for his work is symbolized by his pen.
A Father’s Love The poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden is a result of the speaker’s reflection on his past experiences with his father. Hayden shows all the little things the father did for his family and how the speaker took them for granted. Looking back, the speaker now realizes and understands what the father had really gone through for him. The descriptions Hayden uses express both directly and indirectly the idea of unseen love. Hayden goes into detailed explanations of examples of the father’s devoted love.
This is effective as you can feel what he is and understand what he was going through. When Heaney writes about his father crying and how that is an unusual scene, he is bringing you with him. This helps you picture an unusual scene as his father does not usually cry at funerals. Heaney also writes about the baby cooing and laughing which shows that the baby is unaffected and does not know what is going around them. Heaney also shows an effective choice of imagery in the phrase; “Snowdrops/And candles” This is effective as it helps you picture a calm and peaceful atmosphere.
What does he feel about his father and how does he portray this? The narrator in the poem ‘Follower’ obviously looked up to his father and he was his role model, as he refers to him as an ‘expert’ at what he did and by making it seem as if he could do anything without much effort. For example, the narrator claims that his father he directed the horses to map the furrow with a single ‘pluck’ of the reins. The word ‘pluck’ makes it seem as if the person put minimal effort into the action and did it very easily without a second thought. This gives us the impression that the narrator feels like his father is very strong and experienced at his job.
Firstly, we can see the very ambiguous suggestion of the title ‘Follower’. This could show that now the young boy in this poem follows his father literally and metaphorically. The main story of this poem shows how Heaney was a young boy and was allowed to go with his father to work daily. The purpose of this was to mention when he was around his father as he just followed him around the farm with some desperation to learn and eventually take over the role of his father, with Heaney’s choice in the fifth stanza ; ‘I wanted to grow up and plough’. He believes that by imitating his father’s actions on the farm will enable him to soon take over the role, although he learns how skilled the work is.
In the third stanza the father is shown digging up flowerbeds and is really invested in the digging as he is ‘straining’ himself. The action of him bending low to dig is nostalgic to the writer as he’s sent into a flashback, twenty years ago. The rhythm of his father bending and rising in the garden reminds him of the same pattern he used in the potato drills. Here we experience the shift from present to past. In the
He does not show any outward sign that he is grieving too much over the death of his brother, but traces of his sadness could be seen in the times when he recalls memories of his brother, “the baby cooed and rocked the pram” and “lay in the four foot box as in his cot”. Heaney delivered the poem shrouded in mystery. His introduction in the first stanza does not give the audience a clue about what would happen next. It had a relaxed, happy tone, and gives us the impression that he had all the time in the world to spare. This was shown by the act of “Counting bells knelling classes to a close”, making the first stanza seem to last a long time.
Literary Analysis of Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Digging” Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Digging,” is about a narrator remembering the work done by his father and grandfather, compared to the kind of work the narrator has chosen, which is writing. Reading through the poem, we see the narrator “digging” the ground of his memory and feeling both proud of and humbled by the hard labor his father and grandfather put in planting and digging potatoes. But in the end the narrator feels his choice of work in life is writing, and he will be content with that. In this essay I will analyze how Heaney uses diction, imagery, and sound techniques to contribute to the theme of choosing one’s life work. The poem is made up of nine stanzas, and from the first stanza we are taken through the narrator’s memory into the past, and then back to the present in the final stanza.