Revised

In the poem “Digging” by Seamus Heaney, the idea of culture and heritage is explored through the use of figurative language such as simile, metaphor, and alliteration.
He is exploring his ancestry and roots. This is a poetic memorial to those who came before him. It is also a new form (his generation), written tradition, replaces the old-fashioned (father and grandfathers generation), oral tradition. He “digs” up all the story of his ancestors by recalling and remembering his grandfathers and fathers responsibility. Although he is no longer able to follow the family’s tradition to be potato farmer, he is creating a new, better way to follow the family’s legacy. Heaney uses a lot of figurative language in his poem to illustrate his view. In the first stanza, Heaney uses a strong simile where he describes the pen snug as a gun. In the first stanza, Heaney uses a strong simile in where he describes the pen snug as a gun. Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.” In the next stanza, “Under my window, a clean rasping sound/When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:/My father, digging. I look down,” he uses alliteration and assonance to point out the harshness of the type of work his father did. In the next stanza: “Under my window, a clean rasping sound/When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:/My father, digging. I look down” He uses alliteration and assonance to point out the harshness of the type of work his father does without actually saying he is digging. Other examples of alliteration and assonance are found when Heaney uses the words gravelly, ground, sound, and down.
The words gravelly, ground, sound, and down all contain alliteration and assonance.

I really enjoyed the syntax of my first paragraph so I left it as is. I thought that by writing “He is exploring his ancestry and roots,” instead of “He is exploring his ancestry and the roots.” This change made it more personal and specific. I also made the third sentence into two sentences. In the new sentence I integrated the idea of oral vs. written tradition and I tried to make a comparison between his new generation and that of his father and grandfather. I did not know how to work it so I put it in () brackets. I extended the fifth sentence by adding the last part of the sentence to emphasize what I meant by “dig” up the story of his ancestors. In the next few sentences I tried to delete all the extra part of the stanzas that did not relate to my statement. I also, corrected some grammar mistakes such as adding a coma to the end of the quotation, lower casing the h in he, and changing the tense at the end of the sentence from does to did. I deleted the end of that sentence because he does actually say digging at the end of the sentence. Finally, I changed the last sentence of the paragraph to make it more concise and more practical to be able to transition to the next paragraph.