In Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Digging’, how does the poet express admiration for his father?

In ‘Digging’, the first poem in Seamus Heaney’s first collection Death of a Naturalist, the poet dramatises the moment he decides to dedicate his life to writing poetry. Exploring the emotionally complex relationship he has with his father enables Heaney to articulate some of the misgivings he has about choosing the life of a poet – especially rejecting the traditional agricultural life practised by his father and grandfather before him. The relationship that the poet describes is therefore not entirely positive, as his father comes to represent the guilt he experiences as a result of his failure to follow in his father’s footsteps. Nevertheless, in this poem Heaney is primarily concerned with expressing admiration for his father. In addition to idolising his father for his practical skill as a farmer, the poet also invites the reader to respect his father's work ethic and the dignity with which he performed his labour. One way in which Heaney articulates his admiration for his father’s skill is through his use of specialised vocabulary from the semantic field of agriculture. In the fourth stanza, for instance, Heaney’s diction indicates his familiarity with the type of manual labour in which his father is engaged – digging potatoes. Heaney refers to different parts of his father’s spade, (“lug”, “shaft”, “bright edge”) as well as the specific physical actions required to move it (“levered firmly”, “rooted out tall tops”). In doing so Heaney emphasises the fact that he has first hand knowledge of his father’s aptitude for farming and also makes the physical difficulty of the task apparent to the reader. In phrases such as these, the poet’s father’s physical struggle is highlighted further through the use of broad-vowel assonance, a device which slows the reader’s progress and draws attention to the father’s toil. By using technical vocabulary to emphasise the skill and effort involved in harvesting potatoes Heaney invites the reader to reimagine his father as a skilled artisan rather than a peasant farmer, elevating the dignity of his profession and encouraging the reader to admire him.