The Famine and Irish Identity in Seamus Heaney's "At a Potato Digging" Sandhra Sur 12th Grade

Seamus Heaney paints a picture of Ireland through his poems, at times describing its culture and at other times its politics. In poems like 'Digging' and 'The Follower' he ascribes a sense of dignity to the act of farming, comparing it to the art of writing poetry. Northern Ireland, where Heaney was born in 1939, was predominantly an agrarian economy. Heaney himself grew up on a farm, which played a large role in making the land a dominant motif in his poems. In 'At a Potato Digging' Heaney strips farming of its dignity, in order to describe a change in the Irish person's relationship with the land due to the Potato Famine of 1845-50. Potatoes were an integral part of Irish existence, forming the staple diet as well as the main source of livelihood; it lay at the root of Irish culture. When the blight struck, acres of farmland were reduced to a pile of rotting mud. Out of a population of five million, one million died and two million immigrated. Potato ceased to be a staple crop, shaking the foundation of the Irish identity. His poem is divided into four parts, the first and last depicting the present which is still haunted by memories of the Famine, the second describing the potato as something beautiful, yet repulsive and the...