21 pages • 42 minutes read

Digging

Fiction | Poem | Adult

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Spade

The spade, or shovel, an instrument typically used for digging, is one of the central symbols of Heaney’s “Digging.” The word “spade” appears three times in the poem, and its placement is precise. Essentially, the “spade” slices the poem into three sections. The first “spade” appears in the second stanza, the second follows in the couplet that marks the middle of the poem: “By God, the old man could handle a spade. / Just like his old man” (Lines 15-16), and the third closes the poem at the end of the penultimate stanza. The spade functions as the perpetrator of the poem’s main action, digging through time and memory to make a dramatic comparison between past and present, spades and pens.

The spade is a tool that gives weight and importance to its bearers, and the speaker is fascinated by the strength with which his father and grandfather wield it. At multiple points in the poem, the action of digging, figuratively and literally, is indicated by the word “down.” In the second stanza, upon hearing his father’s shovel, the speaker states, “I look down” (Line 5). Line 5 ends without punctuation, an indication that the speaker moves into the memory, or rather, “digs” into the memory without pause. The following memories are all one interconnected scene that plays out at once in the speaker’s mind. The word “down” appears again near the end of the poem, as a description of the grandfather’s handling of the spade: “Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods / Over his shoulder, going down and down” (Lines 22-23). This comparison, between the action performed by the speaker and the grandfather’s use of the spade, is what gives power to the poem’s primary comparison.

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The speaker does not have a spade, but he writes with a pen as his grandfather dug with a spade, always plunging deeper, further down into the past. As the grandfather’s spade cuts through old peat and bog, through centuries of accumulated soil and minerals, the speaker cuts through his own memories. The “pen” (Line 2) itself receives little mention or attention in Heaney’s poem; the entire symbolic meaning of the “pen” (Line 2) hinges to some extent on the power of the spade.

The Pen

In direct contrast to the spade, the speaker’s pen remains on the fringes of the poem’s narrative while also featuring prominently in the poem’s symbolism. While the “spade” recurs three times, the “pen” (Line 30) is only repeated once, at the very end of the poem. It hems in the rest of the piece, forming a kind of fence around the memories contained within. As stated previously, within the realm of the poem, the pen is more a mirror for the spade than its own tool. The spade performs the heavy lifting; through consistent references to spades and digging, as well as detailed descriptions of the physical act of moving soil with a spade, Heaney imbibes the speaker’s pen with deeper meaning.

The pen takes on the power and strength of the spade, becoming a multi-functional instrument that is at once tool and weapon. With the spade, the speaker’s forefathers possess a tool for protection, as well as an instrument with which to provide for their families. As the mirror for the spade, the pen also takes on these qualities, becoming more than an instrument for writing. The speaker’s pen becomes weaponized, and through hard labor, “digging” and sifting through memory, the speaker turns the pen into his own version of his father’s “spade.”

The Potato

The potato, one of the more overlooked symbols in Heaney’s “Digging,” provides a sense of depth to the poem. While the primary symbols are tool-centric, extending the poem’s central theme and metaphor, the potato also appears several times in a secondary capacity, as support for Heaney’s indirect comparisons between Ireland’s past and the ever-changing present.

The speaker’s father is first aligned with the potato in the third stanza, and immediately the potato is associated with the hard labor of its production: “Stooping in rhythm through potato drills / Where he was digging” (Lines 8-9). What follows is a lengthy description of the father’s hard work, but this time the speaker joins in by expressing love for the potatoes’ “cool hardness in our hands” (Line 14). The potato again returns near the end of the poem, this time associated with smell and memory: “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” (Lines 25-27). Despite seeming beneath notice, the potato here becomes one of the primary elements that propels the speaker deeper into memory, placed on equal footing with the land itself and the act of “digging,” which defines the poem.

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The references to the potato in “Digging,” particularly, the one at the poem’s center, anchor the speaker’s love and yearning for the past, and serve a figurative purpose as well as a literal one. The potato is a vital crop in Ireland, one that is tied intensely to health, livelihood, and fullness; it is also a crop that is known to be associated specifically with Ireland, giving it a double-meaning as a representative of Irish culture and history. The image of Northern Irish men cutting through peat to farm potatoes is a powerful one because of the history and tradition it evokes, and Heaney’s use of the potato as a food that inspires labor, love, and memory makes a literal and symbolic statement about the weight of Ireland’s tradition and heritage.