"Digging" and Memory Anonymous College

Seamus Heaney, a 20th century poet from Northern Ireland, is well known for composing pieces that were strongly influenced by his local background. Heaney’s preoccupation with this largely rural setting, as it appears through the lens of his own life experiences, is plainly demonstrated in his 1966 poem “Digging.” This poem presents Heaney’s struggle to establish a connection with his past and to find his own place in the traditions of his family. This is accomplished mainly through the exploration of Heaney’s memories, specifically memories dealing with labor, and how these recollections tie into Heaney’s efforts to find a purpose in his own work.

The poem travels backwards through Heaney’s memory to eventually span across three different generations, a movement which is facilitated by the act of labor. The poem begins in the present, with Heaney stating that “Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests” (lines 1-2), and the focus then shifts towards Heaney’s father at the “...clean rasping sound” (line 3) of digging in the garden. This act of digging draws Heaney into memory: When his father bends in the familiar motion he associates with digging, Heaney states that the man “...comes up twenty years away….where he was...