Follower - Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
English Lit: AQA GCSE Poetry - Love & Relationships, topic 17.1.10
Key Quotes in Follower
Here are some examples of key quotes from Seamus Heaney's Follower:
'All I ever did was follow
- 'All I ever did was follow / In his broad shadow round the farm’.
- This shows both the narrator's childhood awe of his father (his 'broad shadow') and his own feels of inadequacy ('All I ever did was follow').
'Keeps stumbling...'
- 'But today / It is my father who keeps stumbling / Behind me, and will not go away.’
- As the poem ends we see how the roles of parent and child have reversed as the child grows up.
- Whereas before, the narrator 'stumbled' in his father's wake, now the old man is 'stumbling' behind him.
- The final line, stating that his father ‘will not go away’, gives a sense that he is almost haunted by his father.