At the heart of Heaney’s “Digging” is the weight of inheritance, illustrated by the labors of the speaker’s father and grandfather. Although the first stanza of the poem serves more as an introduction to the modern instruments and tools the speaker references (“the pen,” “the gun” [Line 2]), the second stanza opens with the first lapse into memory. The first detail the speaker takes note of is a sound, powerful in its familiarity: “Under my window, a clean rasping sound” (Line 3). The sound is reminiscent of a shovel, scraping and hissing along the ground, but it also gives rasping breath to a father that seems lost in some sense to the labors of the past. By linking the speaker, the speaker’s father, and the speaker’s grandfather, Heaney clearly indicates a line of descent and inheritance, unbroken even by time and change.

The memories in this poem are, in many ways, stronger and more alive than the speaker’s actual present. The speaker is, in at least one instance, overtaken by the influence of and yearning for the past: “He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep / To scatter new potatoes that we picked, / Loving their cool hardness in our hands” (Lines 12-14).