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Question 1

Themes?

Answer 1

Memories, Family/Parents, Admiration

Question 2

Tones?

Answer 2

Rugged, Nostalgic

Question 3

Context

Answer 3

-Seamus Heaney lived from 1939-2013.
-He grew up on his father’s farm in Northern Ireland
and so the poem is thought to be autobiographical.
-The poem was published in 1966, within a collection
on themes of childhood, identity and rural life.
-Many of his poems praised the concept of hard work
and a rural lifestyle.

Question 4

Content, Meaning and Purpose

Answer 4

-The speaker recalls how he would watch his father
expertly plough the fields on the farm where he grew
up.
-His father is an image of strength and reliability: the
son was in admiration of him and wanted to grow up
to be like him.
-The poem ends with a role reversal: his elderly father
is now reliant on him, and “will not go away”,
ambiguous reference to their relationship.

Question 5

Language

Answer 5

-“His shoulders globed like a full sail strung”:
assonance of ‘ou’ and ‘obed’ emphasise the size of his
father’s shoulders; simile conveys how his father can
harness great power like a sailing ship.
-“An expert”: short sentence, caesura and sharp
consonant sounds reflect father’s precise and
unquestionable skill.
-“I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake”: son’s clumsiness
contrasts the father’s expertise; the sailing metaphor is
extended – the father is so powerful he leaves a ‘wake’
like a ship. He leaves a great impression on the boy.

Question 6

Form and Structure

Answer 6

The six stanzas of four lines each are written in iambic
pentameter. The steady rhythm reflects the steadiness
and reliability of the father’s ploughing.
-The rhyme scheme of ABAB occasionally slips to halfrhymes, symbolising how the boy falls short of his
father.
-Structure mirrors movement of the horse: the
enjambment of “a single pluck / Of Reins” reflects the
turning around of the horse.
-The volta (and role reversal) occurs in the final stanza
when it is his father who is “stumbling / Behind me”.