Seamus Heaney Poem Follower Analysis

522 Words2 Pages

The poem Follower by Seamus Heaney is about the cycle of life between child and parent. Child always follow the parent, who he admires and look up to. As the child is growing up, he learns how to do things on his own and he does not need his mentor anymore. When thy cycle of parent's life comes to an end, parent and child are switching their roles and the child takes care of parent, who now is the follower. Later in this poem we can clearly see that the child likes to follow, what the father does. He wants to be as good as his parent is 'I wanted to grow up and plough. Told through his eyes his father is the most magnificent plowman to have ever walked the face of the earth and he wants to be like him.    The second point I want to analyze is how the child sees parent as an 'expert'. This brief expression at the beginning of the second stanza shows how precise and skilled his father was and how well his father knows his equipment intimately. Heaney describes carefully the precise details of the plough parts. He uses words like 'fit','set' and 'steel-pointed' in order to show us the image of actual expert doing his job. …show more content…

He not only wants to grow up to plow, but he wants to mimic the exact way his father did it: "To close one eye, stiffen my arm." At this point I wondered what is more appealing to the author actual work of ploughing or becoming like the man he admires. It seems to me that instead of becoming a plowman, Heaney lived in a father's shadow 'All I ever did was follow, In his broad shadow round the farm. Sometimes it is more about pursue your own path than someone else's. On the other hand he can still break away from this shadow as he gets

Open Document