Seamus Heanu’s poem “Digging” is rife with various tropes and imageries because it seems like the poet opines about generational differences yet desires to find his niche and carve out his own identity and future free from having to follow in his father and grandfather’s steps. As such, the speaker articulates his desire to become a writer, which has always been his dream. The poet draws a comparison between digging with the pen and digging with spade, and this comparison describes the comparison between digging with spade and digging with pen, which is latent with symbolic power and meaning. The pen and the spade are the two prominent tropes in the poem and are used in this poem. These themes are used in order to make a statement about the currency of certain professions. The pen is a metaphor for those who choose a profession as a writer—which is one in which a person must “dig” with his pen juxtaposed with individuals who engage in manual labor like the speaker’s father does as a farmer. The debate over the mind/body dyad persists in class discourses. While some people believe that manual labor is arduous and more important than the work conducted by academics. Indeed, the untraditional perceptions that “the pen is mightier than the sword” is explored in this cogently written poem. The speaker detail the dexterity of his father at his work, which is categorized as manual, physical work that carries certain connotations about what activities can be categorized as legitimate work. His father, however, did not naturally become good at digging and picking crops, as he states that it took his father over twenty years to enhance his manual skills.
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The speaker seeks autonomy by choosing his own career path that deviates from that of his father and grandfather. The work that the speaker’s father and grandfather makes a difference because it contributes to society as a whole in a positive manner. While the speaker lauds the work of his father, he also uses the metaphor of the pen to draw a digging parallel with the physical digging the speaker witnessed on a quotidian basis.. The dichotomy of mind and body is the central binary in which the speaker tries to articulate symbolically how work and society have changed over the course of various generations. The pen can be mightier than the sword, and it requires diligence and hard work in order to positively impact the world through the pen in the same way that the spade does for the speaker’s father and grandfather.
References
Heaney, S. (2012). Digging. In X. J. Kennedy and D. Gioia, (Eds.), The Literature Collection: An E-Text [VitalSource digital version] (p. 715). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
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