H3an3y: Follw3r

Follower

My father worked with a horse plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow around the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

Commentary

Seamus Heaney's use of nautical imagery to captures the speakers admiration of his father and how the roles of the "follower" switch between the speaker and his father. As the poem begins the speaker describes his father as this amazing person whose "shoulders globed like a full sail strung" caused " the horses to strain at his clicking tongue." These lines in the first stanza brings us into the thoughts of the speakers past and admiration of what his father could do. As the poem continues the speaker speaks of what he observed his father doing in his childhood and the the things he wanted to do too. By the fifth stanza the speaker speaks of himself and how he wanted to be like his father. "I wanted to grow up and plough", just as his father did. "All i ever did was follow"

As the poem ends the speaker uses the words, nuisance, tripping, falling and yapping to describe the way his father possibly saw him, when he followed him around in the fields. However the roles switch, now his father is "stumbling" behind him now, figuratively or possibly physically becoming the follower the speaker once was.

Over all the poem illustrates the speakers, pride, and admiration of his father and how his father had an impact on his life. The poem reminds me of my mother and grandmother who died recently. The speaker in this poem saw his father as this amazing person that he followed and looked up to, but its mind boggling that now he's the one that takes care of him or how because he is physically gone, the lessons and morals his father taught him stay with him forever.