Critical Analysis Of Follower By Seamus Heaney

“An expert (Heaney, Line 5),” is how Seamus Heaney pronounces his father’s agricultural prowess in “Follower”. Upon first inspection, Heaney’s first-person poems “Follower” and “Digging” can be easily construed as a collective ode to his predecessors. This argument has merit, but the compositions also exude far deeper emotions: feelings of conflict, entrapment, and uncertainty. Although both works’ central themes concern Heaney’s journey of acceptance that he will never match his father’s aptitude, they emit very different concluding tones. Whereas “Digging” articulates some certainty in the speaker’s future direction, “Follower” ends on a bitter note; the reader is unsure how, or even if, Heaney and his father will progress. Boly’s critical review of “Follower” postulates a child in awe of his “mythical parent” whom all beings and elements “obey” (270). Whilst both poems do explicitly place Heaney’s father on a pedestal, Heaney is in a constant state of

Every stanza harnesses an ABAB rhyming pattern, with all but one line having 8 or 9 syllables. Due to these constraints, and the resulting enjambment and caesura, the poem feels disjointed and unnatural. Arguably, this is an allusion to how Heaney felt in the field, unable to mimic his father’s smooth actions. Forever, the speaker is in his father’s “broad shadow (Line 20)”. However, whilst being in his father’s shadow is interpretable as a simple failure to inherit his father’s skills, it could also signify how Heaney feels bound to follow his father’s vocation. Rather than being allowed to express his creativity, he becomes limited by expectations and traditions. “Digging” also begins with a conventional rhyming couplet, yet the same words at the end do not take that form. As Heaney has matured he feels less shackled by the past, and free to assert himself in his own