Ideas and main themes in Digging

 

The most important lines to discuss and memorize are 

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

You can listen to the poet reading the poem by clicking on this link: 

 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/play/76727

Ten main ideas from the poem digging which is useful to everyone 

1.     Think different 

2.     Develop your own perspective in life 

3.     Keep Digging - Keep Swimming - Finding Nemo and Finding Dory 

4.     Think beyond the existing framework of life

5.     Son and Father - Mutual respect in whatever they are digging 

6.     Window as a metaphor - Exploring and looking out

7.     Move away from the comfort zone

8.     Hard work - Dream Vs Action 

9.     Taking a risk, gambling with life

10.  Love what you do 

Theme # 1 Labour and Craft

 

•      The poem is about work

•      Manual labour is made into a craft. 

•      Blue Collar Jobs and White-collar jobs 

•      Digging presented not as a repetitive task but as a craft. Like an artist, his father is digging. 

•      The technique used by his father even though it was a physically demanding job

•      The physical act of digging becomes the inspiration for writing the poem

•      The craft of writing 

•      The final stanza when he says – I will dig with it – the poets decides to write 

•      Father and grandfather has become the inspiration for him 

•      One work is manual and the other one is imaginative   

 

Theme # 2 Family and Tradition 

•      Three generations represented in the poem 

•      Grandfather, Father and Son 

•      The tradition of farming – one of the earliest forms of livelihood. 

•      The new profession of writing 

•      The poet is trying to be like his father and grandfather 

•      The use of tools – spade by his father and grandfather 

•      The writer’s tool is a pen 

•      Hard work, grit, concentration, and persistence – Values that he learned from father and grandfather. 

(The themes are culled from LitCharts)