Digging For a Living :: Digging for Living

Digging For a Living   In his poem Digging, Seamus Heaney describes a rum relationship between a boy and his father.  Their relationship closely relates to the unrivaled I hold in with my father.  Throughout the poem, the poets pen is contrasted with the fathers common raccoon, utilize each as a symbol of their vocation and background.  Along the homogeneous lines, the relationship between my father and myself can be expressed through my keyboard and his pencil.  Heaneys poem tells of a boy and his father who have different callings for their career.  The father has worked on the familys set up his entire life, digging up potatoes and keeping up the farm.  The poet describes his fathers digging, as the call infers, with alliteration from the line Under my window, a clean rasping lowering when the spade sinks into gravely ground My father, digging (3-5).  The poet, on the other hand, would untold rather be writing stories or novels tha n out in the athletic field doing manual labor all day.  The father digs physically with his manpower while on the contrary, the son digs mentally with his brain.  Heaney uses a spade to symbolize the fathers ambitions, thus, representing his farm work.  He metaphorically describes the sons writing with the passage, Between my sense and my thumb the squat pen rests (29-30).  My father and I share the same type of relationship that Heaney and his father have in the poem.  My father is an architect and designs buildings for a living.  He spends most of his day at his drawing table, sketching plans for novel buildings.  On the other hand, I have a job that involves using computers most of the day.  He uses his pencil to get the job done, while I use my keyboard to get the job done.  When I was younger, he always wanted me to be an architect with him, but now he accepts the fact that I am not going to be an architect because I have a sufficien t job in the computer field. Throughout Heaneys poem, phraseology highlights certain course and phrases that require extra emphasis.  For example, in the line The blunt boot nestled on the lug, the shaft against the inside knee was levered firmly, the words chosen intensely impact the meaning (10-1).  Lug, shaft and levered all heighten the line.  Furthermore, most of the words are parts of a gun, which is another metaphor used.