Analysis Of Digging And The Harvest Bow By Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is a well-known writer who is known to be one of the biggest contributors to poetry during his time. He has become an influential model for many other writers and his legacy continues to spread onto new generations. Many of Heaney’s poems reflect on his past relationships, experiences, and even culture. His poems often revolve around where he came from. A theme that shows up frequently is losing his innocence as a child becoming a young man after being exposed to the world around him. He reminisces on his childhood memories in many poems and often writes about his father. Through the use of structure, imagery, and symbols in the poems Digging and The Harvest Bow, Heaney attempts to depict his past. It can be inferred that he does

In the poem Digging, the first image presented is, “...sinks into gravelly ground..,” (Heaney 4) which gives the reader an idea that the work is manual and physical because the term “gravelly” would be associated with outside physical labor. Upon researching into Heaney’s background, his paternal family was in the agricultural economy whereas his maternal family fell into the industrial economy. Another instance where Heaney uses imagery is in the following quote, “The coarse boot nestled on the lug” (Heaney 10). Heaney uses the term “coarse” to further bring the audience to recognize that his father worked hard and life was not luxurious for his father.The use of imagery helps depict and emphasize the hardships his father faced and his admiration for his father. In The Harvest Bow, Heaney uses imagery to describe and plant an image of not only a past experience of the both of them together but also the image of his father at an older age. In the following line, “Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks/ And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of gamecocks,” (Heaney 7-8) it provides the reader more information on his father’s past and also sets an emotion for the poem. The beginning gives off the impression that his father is at an old age and in a way, it sounds as if Heaney is taking in the memories and details of his father before his father would pass

In Digging, Heaney symbolizes his pen with his father’s shovel. This symbolizes that he and his father may have different lifestyles, his father was agricultural whereas he was was a writer and received education that his father did not, but he still tries to tie in his father’s past with his life.. In The Harvest Bow, Heaney symbolizes the bow with his father which is shown in the following line, “I see us walk between the railway slopes/ Into an evening of long grass and midges..." (Heaney 14-15). Heaney writes about walking between the railway slopes, reminiscing on his intimate memories with his father. This supports the idea that Heaney misses his father or his indeed trying to find things to connect himself with his father now that his father is gone. Other evidence proving that this poem had an emotional concept behind it is when Heaney states, “Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.” (Heaney 29-30) This shows that even after his father’s presence is gone, it still lingers around Heaney and in this case, the harvest