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10 questions available at this level
by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) was a Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet from County Derry, Northern Ireland. He grew up on a farm called Mossbawn and many of his poems explore his rural childhood and his complex relationship with his father, Patrick Heaney.
Heaney felt a deep tension between his father's world of physical, manual labour and his own path as a poet and intellectual. "Follower" captures both his childhood admiration for his father's farming skill and his adult guilt at having chosen a different life.
The poem's devastating final stanza reverses the roles: the ageing father now follows the son, perhaps literally (in old age and dependence) or metaphorically (as a persistent presence in Heaney's memory and conscience). The poem explores father-son relationships, role reversal, admiration and guilt, and the way family bonds shape identity.
“globed like a full sail”
The nautical simile in line 2 presents the father as powerful and commanding, his shoulders billowing like sails. It elevates manual labour to something heroic and grand.
“An expert”
The blunt, two-word sentence fragment is emphatic and definitive. Its brevity mirrors the father's no-nonsense, practical character.
“Mapping ... exactly”
In line 12, "Mapping" elevates ploughing to a precise, intellectual skill, and "exactly", the last word of the stanza, reinforces the father's perfectionism and mastery of his craft.
“stumbled ... wake”
In line 13, "Stumbled" captures the child's clumsiness, in contrast with the father's control. "Wake" continues the nautical imagery: the father is a ship, the child trailing behind.
“broad shadow”
In lines 19 to 20 the speaker admits that all he ever managed was to trail behind his father, so following, the poem's key idea, becomes a sign of futility: the child could only imitate, never match, his father's skill. The father's "broad shadow" represents both his physical dominance and his overwhelming influence on the child's identity.
“nuisance”
In line 21 the self-deprecating label, and the pile-up of clumsy -ing verbs that follows it, reveal the speaker's sense of inadequacy. He defines his childhood self as a burden.
“stumbling ... will not go away”
The devastating reversal in lines 23 to 24: the father's verb echoes the child's earlier clumsiness. "Will not go away" is ambiguous: frustration, guilt, love, or haunting memory.
“globed like a full sail ... wake”
Comparing the father to a ship elevates him to something powerful and commanding. The child follows in his "wake" like a small vessel trailing a great one.
“headrig”
Precise farming terminology, from the names for parts of the plough in lines 5 to 6 to the word for the strip where the team turns in line 8, demonstrates the son's intimate knowledge of his father's craft and his deep, admiring observation of the work. The short, plain verbs of these stanzas reflect the father's practical, unadorned character.
[Lines 8 to 9: the tug on the reins runs across the stanza break]
The line break enacts the sharp pulling motion of the reins, making the reader physically experience the turn of the plough team.
“But today”
The conjunction "But" and the shift to present tense in line 22 create a dramatic reversal. Everything the poem has built is inverted in its last three lines.
“stumbled ... stumbling”
The same verb applied to both generations, to the child in line 13 and to the father in line 23, enacts the role reversal structurally. The child's past clumsiness becomes the father's present frailty.
“will not go away”
The final phrase resists simple interpretation: is it irritation, love, guilt, or the inescapable presence of family? The ambiguity is the poem's emotional power.
Cecil Day-Lewis
Both explore father-son relationships and role reversal. Day-Lewis watches his son leave; Heaney's father eventually stumbles behind the son. Both capture the pain of changing dynamics.
Charles Causley
Both are deeply personal poems about a parent. Heaney's father is a living presence who becomes a memory; Causley's parents are memories who become a living vision.
Charlotte Mew
Both use rural farming settings and dialect to establish voice. Heaney's speaker admires his father's skill; Mew's farmer reveals possessiveness through his rural dialect.