Seamus Heaney Digging

Her father has also shut out the word. “My father spends his time out the side of the house, digging a hole… I think he is digging the pond, the one Ma wanted, but he doesn’t say, he just digs.” (77) Billie Jo’s father appears to almost be “digging away the pain.” Their relationship becomes damaged and weak, as does Billie Jo’s relationship with other people. But even in the dark, there is light. Rain comes and washes away the dust, but the dust makes it back. The rain and the dust resemble a fight between good and evil. A pattern of hope emerges of hope being lost and being

Essentially a monologue set within a frame, this poem creates two personae. The anonymous author gives a brief introduction and conclusion. The Wanderer, an aging warrior, who roams the world seeking shelter and aid. The Wanderer’s monologue divides into two distinct parts, the first being a lament for his exile and the loss of kin, friends, home, and the generosity of his king. In nature, he finds absolutely no comfort, for he has set sail on the winter stricken sea. Poignantly, the speaker dreams that he is among his companions, and embracing his king, only to awaken facing the gray, winter sea, and snowfall mingled with hail.

The speaker is the voice of the poem, since “I” is used alot in this poem, it is in first person. I imagined the speaker’s

A Comparison of Death of a Naturalist and Digging by Seamus Heaney The poems 'Death of a Naturalist' and 'Digging' have many similarities, and contrasts. Some of the reoccurring themes in the two poems include memories of childhood and changes in the life of the writer. There are contrasts too, in 'Death of a Naturalist'; the writer is concentrating on himself and his own experiences in life, rather than the experiences of others. In 'Digging', the opposite is true, as the writer concentrates mainly on the events in other people's lives, namely his father and grandfather.

being severed by white sealers as they tried to save themselves from drowning. Figurative language and the overall tone of the poem illustrate the gloom and sadness surrounding the event: “shadows” and “darkness”. The landscape made up of “low hills”, ”the silver-grey wash of clouds” and “the steel-shining channel” reflects this dark mood. Reference to black crows, hectoring and descending, eyes being pecked, conjures images of cold-blooded, inhumane slaughter and “filaments of sinew”. Harwood’s typical use of the sonnet form is not employed here but experiments with rhyme and metre, in the form of free verse, evident in many of her later poems. Run-on lines and stanzas add to the narrative style of the poem, best read out loud. Although the

Methods: The poet in the very first line uses he two words “Your” and “my” to create clear separation or division.

With virtually any kind of text, critical thinking is required to unveil the true meaning and purpose behind an artist’s work. Whether that text is a poem, novel or film, we as scholars must find evidence to support our claims of the current text. The text I shall be analyzing is the short film Dig, written and directed by Toby Halbrooks. The main story line of this film is of a young girl watching her father dig an unprecedented hole in their own backyard. To the untrained mind, he seems to just be digging for no apparent reason. However, that is not the case at all. The father digging the hole is a metaphor for him attempting to escape his problems shown through the daughter’s eyes. The evidence supplied throughout the film all point to how

In the third stanza, a lot of imagery is used. The significant ones are present in the seventh and eleventh lines. In the first line, the poet writes, "A

In the first stanza, Strand starts his first line with the usage of intense imagery. “Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.” His usage of imagery grabs the reader’s attention and has us immediately wondering why ink is coming from the corners of his mouth. Ink is such an odd thing for someone to have coming from their mouth, and with that one line Strand has made us long to read more. Ink is also traditionally highly toxic, suggesting the writer may have a wish to die a slow, agonizing death. The second line talks about how happy he is, seemingly in conflict with the first line. This portrays that he enjoys eating ink and is rather happy with himself, as maddeningly illogical as this may be. Line three is an example of a metaphor. We learn that the reason he has ink in his mouth is because he was eating poetry. Reality seems to be at odds with what the writer is experiencing, as there would be no way for the ink to still be liquid. Perhaps the sanity of the writer is in question, and it could be that as he reads the lines of verse he is merely imagining them as

conversation. It isn't like a poem at all. It says "By god the old man

The poem talks about a man- an anonymous “he”- a perfectionist whose poetry was understandable and who, himself, understood “human folly” and the human psyche like “the back of his hand”. He was

In the third stanza a box is introduced. It can be assumed that this box is a coffin. The box is being lifted into the ground and the "Boots of Lead" "creaking" across the poets soul symbolize the mourners walking on the fresh grave. The "tolling" of space mimics the church bell that is introduced in the following stanza.

Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than

However, because Heaney is writing as an observational poet, without the other characters emotions, the poem would be bland and without feeling. In the first stanza, you find out that it is written in the first person narrative and the persona is most likely to be Heaney himself. It begins in the college sick bay, where Heaney has been waiting all morning, not knowing why. At this point, Heaney could be feeling bored, isolated and lonely.

The force of the wind and the rain is made to be felt in the following