using mechanical terms to describe the marriage of shovel and man, creating an altogether different image of a type of robot tearing up sod. While he describes this straining rump, Heaney takes this man out of the realm of men, and into a realm of manufactured workers, a realm of repetition, a realm of stooping workers, their humanity set aside to finish the job at hand. However, while Heaney describes the toil of his father, he also ties it to the alike labor of a past generation, namely his grandfathers, used to nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods/Over his shoulder.(22-23) This juxtaposition of past and present illustrates the monotony of the work involved, and how things take time to change. Heaney creates the transition between his father and grandfather in a two-line stanza that highlights the pride of these men, and how their automation gave cause for praise from their descendant, Heaney. Their legacy of hard work, however mechanized, illustrates the value placed on labor in their society. While Heaney creates the idea of men-machines through visual images and parts, he also creates a very auditory world, one that echoes the act of a factory, or a piece of farm machinery. From the first stanza, with its clean rasping sound, the readers ear can almost hear the whir of a lawn mower, or something of that nature, cutting and slicing. (3) The rhythm of Heaneys fathers digging highlights the monotony of the act, the incessant meter of his practiced spade. This coincides with the sounds in the prior stanza, as the authors first recollection is an auditory one. Later in the poem, the squelch and slap/Of soggy peat, continues the idea of a machine chugging away at the turf, creating again the essence of a machine oblivious to the conditions of the work men. (25-26) Heaneys workers are extremely vivid, both physically and mentally, even after so many years, and the trials and hardships that they endure, day in and day out, add to the e...
