Digging Intro and Outline

Outline:

I. In the beginning of "Digging," Heaney depicts the speaker as conflicted, and troubled by the fact he can only watch his father dig.
a. "Under my window, a clean rasping sound/When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:/My father, digging. I look down"
b. "Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds/Bends low, comes up twenty years away"
II. Heaney then uses this feeling of guilt to enhance feelings of admiration the speaker has towards his father and grandfather.
a."My grandfather cut more turf in a day/Than any other man on Toner's bog."
b. "By God, old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man."
III. Finally, Heaney uses the speaker's decision to write instead of carrying on the family tradition of digging to show that we sometimes cannot live up to the expectations set upon us.
a. "Through living roots awaken in my head./ But I've no spade to follow men like them."
b. "Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests./I'll dig with it."

Intro Paragraph:

In "Digging" by Seamus Heaney, the author uses characterization to provide the reader with an example of how sometimes we cannot follow what others want us to do. Heaney introduces the speaker as conflicted as he watches, instead of helps, his father digging. However, by the end of the poem, the speaker puts aside the fact that he views himself as an outcast in his own family, and does his own "digging" by writing. Heaney develops the speaker throughout the poem to portray how to deal with expectations we cannot meet, and that there is always an alternative answer to a problem.