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Examples Of Digging By Seamus Heaney

Decent Essays

“Death of a Naturalist” was concerned with the notion of growing up and loss of innocence. Seamus Heaney describes the childhood experience differently as the child grows and changes perception of ‘nature’ from love to fear. Similarly, in “Digging”, Heaney presents himself as a child who studies through writing, in contrast to his father and his grandfather who dig into the ground. Heaney's father and grandfather use their shovels to work with the land, while Heaney uses his pen to write poetries. It is clear that Heaney is not going to follow his father’s legacy, ‘digging’, he is going to have a different profession.

Seamus Heaney explores the amusement and happiness of a child discovering nature: “There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,” …show more content…

Heaney investigates the interest of frog because the word ‘slobber’ is impactful when describing ‘frogspawn’; this is a metaphor and it creates an imagery of large, sticky frog eggs. Also, in general, kids love to fiddle with squishy and unfamiliar objects. In the poem, the child is curious about how frogs evolve and investigates the frogspawn by touching the egg, he also said “best of all”, which could imply that was his most memorable experience. Therefore, the word ‘slobber’ is significant to this poem. This makes the reader think back to their childhood and feel nostalgic of the amazing nature. This could also be Heaney trying to remind people about the joy of …show more content…

For example, “By God, the old man can handle a spade, just like his old man.” This line is metaphor and Heaney is complimenting his father and grandfather that they are the best ‘diggers’, as the language it uses is colloquial because this line strongly suggest about Heaney’s family and it sounds like Heaney is trying to impress his father and grandfather’s ‘digging’ skills. Also, “By God”, this implies Heaney’s amazement and it grabs readers attention and shows how much admiration Heaney has for his father and grandfather’s ‘digging’ skill. This makes the reader feel empathetic because just working does not simply mean it is important, but tradition too - to work as part of the family tradition and carry father’s

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