Follower

Question 1

context

Answer 1

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was born in Northern Ireland and grew up on his father’s farm. ‘Follower’ was published in 1966 in a poetry collection which dealt with themes of childhood, identity and rural life.

Question 2

summary

Answer 2

1) The narrator describes his father’s expert ploughing. As a boy, he greatly admired his father’s skill.
2) The boy followed his father around the farm. Sometimes he’d stumble and fall, and occasionally his father would carry him on his back.
3) He wanted to grow up to be like his father, but all he ever did was follow him around being a nuisance.
4) Now they’re both older, the relationship has been reversed, and it’s the father who ‘follows’ his son.

Question 3

form

Answer 3

FORM -The poem is made up of six stanzas, each four lines long, and is written mostly in iambic tetrameter. This neat structure and steady rhythm mimics the action of ploughing. There’s a regular ABAB thyme scheme, but some are only half-rhymes - this reflects how the boy falls short of being like his father.

Question 4

structure

Answer 4

STRUCTURE - The first three stanzas focus on the father. The next two stanzas focus on the boy’s struggle with his identity - he admired his father and wanted to be like him, but failed.
There is a role reversal in the last stanza - now the father is “stumbling / Behind” his son.

Question 5

nautical imagery

Answer 5

NAUTICAL IMAGERY -The narrator uses language of the sea and sailing to describe his father’s ploughing. This emphasises the father’s strength and skill and the admiration the boy felt for him.
The narrator describes his father as the sails, the captain and the ship itself - he’s everything to his son.

Question 6

reflective language

Answer 6

REFLECTIVE LANGUAGE
-The narrator sees himself as a “nuisance”, and maybe a failure, but at the
end of the poem he understands that the father he admired so much as a boy is now dependent on him.

Question 7

quote about Familial Love + *Nature**?

Answer 7

“His shoulders globed like a full sail strung”

-compares father’s shoulders to a sail on a boat / ship - emphasises how much he admires his power.

-sibilance of “shoulders” and “sail”
suggests father works v smoothly & deliberately.
->appears larger than life, to the son.

-speaker fondly recounts the idolisation of father in his youth - radiates admiration in regard to his strength & power, natural imagery compounding father’s physical strength and skill in the field

Question 8

quote about Longing + Age?

Answer 8

“in his broad shadow round the farm”

-longs to follow in fathers footsteps when older

“it is my father who keeps stumbling”

-demonstrates effects of ageing, using role reversal between his father & himself. In his old age, father has almost become a child again, helpless & incapable of taking care of himself.

-once strong & skilled father is now juxtaposed against old man who now follows his son around. His older father seems alien in comparison to the one who has just been described

-represents circle of life

-fond reminiscent tone is understood when paralleled to the now feeble presentation of father - longs to recall the strength and power of his father, not letting those memories be tainted by his current deteriorating state