Digging

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 author, father, grandfather, work, first, about, writing, verse, farming, way, life, fathers’, spade, poem, pen, makes, line, last, grandfathers’, goes, working, verses, through, great, follow, doesn’t, detail, describes, days, comparison, being, writer, whom, towards, three, though, talks, starts, squat, shows, seven, sentence, respect, really, realization, lets, know, greatness, good, gives