10.1.1

Summary, Structure & Form

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Summary of Follower

Seamus Heaney's poem explores familial love from the perspective of a child.

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Background

  • Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, who grew up in Bellaghy in Northern Ireland.
  • He was one of eight children.
  • He went on to become an English teacher.
  • This poem was published in 1966 in a collection that focused on childhood and this rural, Irish identity.
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Summary - beginning

  • Heaney’s poem follows his childhood memories of his father ploughing. He admires his father’s skill.
  • The poem continues on as the boy in the poem follows in his father’s shadow. Sometimes, his father is carrying him.
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Summary - shift

  • The perspective of the poem shifts and we hear from the narrator in the present.
  • He wished to be like his father, but all he ever really did was follow him around.
  • The poem ends ambiguously, with Heaney’s father following behind him, tripping and stumbling.
  • But it is unclear whether it is his father or the memory of him that follows him around.
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Parent-child relationship

  • Heaney explores the often painful realisation that our parents aren’t the superheroes we imagine them to be as a child.
  • Heaney remembers his childhood idolisation of his father and his inability to match up to his father’s strength.
  • He then suddenly and abruptly undermines this image with the final stanza – in which is father is now stumbling and frail.

Structure and Form in Follower

Here are some key examples of structure and form in Seamus Heaney's poem Follower:

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Rhythm and rhyme

  • The poem follows a neat ABAB rhyme scheme, and is written in iambic tetrameter.
  • There are half rhymes as well, which gives the poem a songlike and childish character.
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Title

  • The title of the poem ‘Follower’ refers to both father and son at different points in the poem.
  • The opening stanzas of the poem focus on the narrator's admiration for his father’s skill.
  • The central stanzas follow the narrator attempting to find his own identity, and the poem concludes with the father following behind.

Jump to other topics

1When We Two Parted - Lord Byron (1788-1824)

2Love’s Philosophy - Percy Bysshe Shelley

3Porphyria’s Lover - Robert Browning (1812-1889)

4Sonnet 29 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

4.1Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ Analysis

5Neutral Tones - Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

6Letters from Yorkshire - Maura Dooley (Born 1957)

7The Farmer’s Bride - Charlotte Mew (1869-1928)

8Walking Away - Cecil Day Lewis (1904-1972)

9Eden Rock - Charles Causley (1917-2003)

10Follower - Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

11‘Mother, Any Distance’ - Simon Armitage (Born1963

12Before You Were Mine - Carol Ann Duffy (Born 1955)

13Winter Swans - Owen Sheers (Born 1974)

14Singh Song! - Daljit Nagra (Born 1966)

15Climbing My Grandfather - Andrew Waterhouse

16Grade 9 - Comparisons

16.1Grade 9 - Comparisons

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