10.1.2

Themes

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Senses

Heaney uses a variety of techniques to make this an incredibly sensory (appeals to the senses) poem. These help to create an incredibly vivid picture of his memory.

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Natural Imagery

  • The narrator gives a sense of his deep connection to the natural, rural world.
  • He uses words such as ‘sod’, ‘plod’, ‘headrig’ (a strip of land), ‘team’ and ‘hob-nailed’ to evoke a vivid picture of the farming life of his childhood.
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Sensory language

  • This is also a deeply sensory (appeals to the senses) poem as Heaney builds up a landscape of sound, sights and movements.
  • We hear his father's ‘clicking tongue’, sod moving but not ‘breaking’, and we smell the ‘sweating team’ of horses.
  • Heaney builds up a sense of memory as far more than just images and evokes it vividly through using all the senses.

Parent-Child Relationship

Follower explores how the parent-child relationship develops as the child grows up. Unlike Walking Away, it does so from the perspective of the child.

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Narrator's inadequacy

  • The narrator tinges this memory with his own feelings of inadequacy in the face of his father.
  • He feels that he is a ‘nuisance’ and worries: ‘all I ever did was follow'.
  • He also impresses on the reader the physical strength of his father – he is a ‘broad shadow’, his shoulders are like a ‘full sail strung’. This shows his admiration and awe of his parent.
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Ending

  • In contrast to the earlier description, the father is now an old man who is ‘stumbling’ behind him.
  • This shows how time has changed how he views his father - especially since the narrator had previously 'stumbled in his hob-nailed wake'.
  • The ending of the poem is ambiguous (unclear) – the final line states that his father ‘will not go away’. This gives a sense that he is almost haunted by his father.
  • This could suggest that it is not his father following him, but the memory of him.

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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