Digging

A detailed Summary of Digging

In Digging we have three characters: the author (the son), his father, and grandfather. The author is clearly making a comparison of his way of life and his fathers' way of life. He talks more about his father and grandfather than he does about himself but his subject is clearly stated that he is a writer, while his father and grandfather are farmers. He makes the comparison by first relapsing into his fathers' line of work. Then the author goes on into talking about his grandfather and his line of work. At first we are given details as the author seeing his writing as less significant than the hard laboring of his father and grandfather. But at some point through the poem, the author goes through a transition to where he realizes that writing is his farming, and that the pen is his spade. The only clues that the author gives us about him and his writing are by the first and last verse. But the author makes it clear that his writing is in no way compared to the labor of his father and grandfather in the first few verses, but then comes to a different realization by the end.

We are introduced into the scene with the author sitting at his desk in his room, when he is distracted by his father outside working in the flowerbed

. He then goes into describing each detail that he sees and hears: clear rasping sound, when the spade sinks into gravelly ground, till his straining rump, stooping in rhythm through potato drills. He describes it as an art and not just as somebody working in the flowerbed. By this I take it as the author showing great respect for his father and what he does. The author is then brought back to the days when he helped his father. In verse four he goes into such a detail as to think that the feeling that he gets from it lets him know he is alive and loves farming. By verse five he tells us that his father is really good at what he does and makes a comparison of him to his grandfather, whom also is really good at farming.

In verse seven the author starts to develop his actual feelings about his father and grandfathers' line of work as it is incorporated into his life. In the first three lines of verse seven he states that he has done the work and knows how to do it well, but the last sentence, But I've no spade to follow men like them, he makes it obvious that he doesn't have the heart to follow the greatness of his fathers' and grandfathers' farming. The first and last verses are what tell the readers that the auth

Some common words found in the essay are:
, father grandfather, towards father, verse seven, greatness fathers', fathers' grandfathers', writing farming, father author, author goes, squat pen, makes comparison,

Approximate Word count = 830
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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Digging

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