Analyzing Seamus Heaney's Poem Digging

In the poem, "Digging", the author begins the poem creating an image for his audience. "Between my finger and thumb/The squat pen rests; snug as a gun." He is sitting at his desk writing, when he hears the sound of digging below, outside of his window. He looks down and sees his deceased father, who used to dig for potatoes. "When the spade sinks into the gravelly ground." This verse insinuates that the dig is hard and his father works hard at it, which is similar to Heaney sitting at his desk writing poetry...he has to work hard to dig deep into his mind to make his writings exceptional. In the first stanza, he focuses our attention to the fact that this is set in present time, although he goes back in time through his memories. He goes

This news turned what was supposed to be a fun break, into a sad and gloomy one. Heaney's tone is reflective -- "in the college sick bay", making it known that he was sick with grief when he found out about his brother's death, while away at school. As he encounters other mourners, his neighbors, his crying father, Big Jim Evans and his distraught mother, his tone seems to mimic embarrassment. Heaney's detached tone never shows emotion. He writes that, "Whispers informed strangers that I was the eldest." He states that the ambulance arrives with his brother's corpse "stanched and

Heaney displays, in both poems, that his dad was a tough man. But he finally saw his father cry in "Midterm Break"-- "In the porch I met my father crying/He had always taken funerals in his stride". His father is tough, yet sensitive to death. He builds his father up to be a very tough & hard working man in "Digging". His tone in "Midterm Break", leads the audience to believe that he has never seen his father cry, until now. He sees a different side of his dad, now that his brother has passed. Both of the poems also involve death. He talks about the day he came home and how his brother looked when he seen him for the first time in six weeks. "I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now/Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple."

Heaney's tone throughout "Midterm Break" is very calm and somewhat detached. But he still somehow expresses his emotion through his words in the poem. He seems strong throughout this ordeal. "The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram/When I came in, and I was embarrassed." The happiness of the innocent baby is strikingly different than what Heaney feels right now, which is