Seamus Heaney paints a picture of Ireland through his poems, sometimes describing its culture, sometimes its politics. In poems like “Digging” and “The Follower,” he attributes a sense of dignity to the act of farming, comparing it to the art of writing poetry. Northern Ireland, where Heaney was born in 1939, had a predominantly agrarian economy. Heaney himself grew up on a farm, which played an important role in making the land a dominant motif in his poems. In "At a Potato Digging", Heaney strips agriculture of its dignity, in order to describe a change in the Irish relationship with the land due to the potato famine of 1845-1850. Potatoes were an integral part of Irish existence, providing the staple diet as well as the main source of income; it is the basis of Irish culture. When the blight struck, acres of farmland were reduced to a pile of rotting mud. Out of a population of five million, one million died and two million immigrated. The potato ceased to be a staple crop, shaking the foundations of Irish identity. His poem is divided into four parts, the first and last describing the present still haunted by memories of the famine, the second describing the potato as something beautiful but repulsive and the third recounting the famine itself. Heaney recounts the indelible horrors of the potato famine to describe the changing attitude of distrust towards the land to bring out the altered notion of an Irish identity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The poem opens by describing agriculture in the present tense as an activity devoid of dignity. Heaney uses the onomatopoeic words "stumble", "crumble" and "fumble" which also form an internal rhythm to evoke images of awkwardness. The loss of dignity is further accentuated by the “humiliated knees”. “Humbled” implies that there was once a pride in agriculture, which had been lost to famine. Being forced to bow is poignantly described in "like crows raiding black fields", where an image of a scavenger is evoked. The earth is described as something that died in famine. The loss of faith in the land is enumerated by the superstition of paying “tribute to the god of the harvest”. Northern Ireland is predominantly Catholic, following a monotheistic doctrine. Paying homage to the God of the Harvest (a pagan figure) reflects the upheaval of existing identities due to the horrors of the Famine. The first section of the poem follows a loose iambic meter, which imitates the rhythm of digging. An abab rhyme scheme distinguishes the present from the past. The potato imagery acts as a link between the past and the present. Described in free verse with a loose trochaic meter, the potato is both beautiful and repulsive. The enjambment plays an important role in distinguishing the two contrasting evocations: "the tubercles with slit eyes seem the petrified hearts of the drills. Split/with a shovel they appear white as cream". While “slant-eyed” conjures up the image of disease, “white as cream” is a positive image of the freshness inside the potato. The “Good Smells” express a feeling of fulfillment, distinguishing the tone of the second part from the first. While the former reflects distrust and fear of the earth, the latter constructs a sense of reverence through images of birth. This reverence predates the Famine. The “swollen stones” and the “..