Digging by seamus heaney literary devices

Answer the following question and support your interpretation with evidence gained from a close reading analysis of the texts(s). Be sure to mention the author's use of literary devices such as imagery, metaphor, irony, and symbol.

Your essay should be a multi-paragraph essay with an introduction and a thesis statement, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Your essay should include quotations and follow the conventions of standard English grammar and usage, as well as MLA in-text citation rules for quotations.

In “Digging,” by Seamus Heaney (Poem 1), and “For Saundra,” by Nikki Giovani, (Poem 2) the poets seem to reach the opposite conclusion: Heaney decides to write, but Giovani wonders about not writing. How does the speaker of each poem arrive at his/her conclusion, and which conclusion do you find more persuasive?

“Digging,” by Seamus Heaney (1966)

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

MLA Citation

Heaney, Seamus. “Digging.” Death of a Naturalist, Faber, 1966. pp. 12.

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