"Ze Followa" by Seamus Heaney

The Follower

My father worked with a horse plough,His shoulders globed like a full sail strungBetween the shafts and the furrow.The horses strained at his clicking tongue.An expert. He would set the wingAnd fit the bright-pointed sock.The sod rolled over without breaking.At the headrig, with a single pluckOf reins, the sweating team turned roundAnd back into the land. His eyeNarrowed 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 backDipping and rising to his plod.I wanted to grow up and plough,To close one eye, stiffen my arm.All I ever did was followIn his broad shadow around the farm.I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,Yapping always. But todayIt is my father who keeps stumblingBehind me, and will not go away.

COMMENTARY

In “The Follower” by Seamus Heaney, he uses metaphors to express the speaker’s feelings about his father’s labor. However, the poem can be interpreted in different ways, due to the connotative meanings within the poem. The title of this poem is connotative, because it can mean apprentice and follower as in to literally trail behind someone or follow in their footsteps depending on which interpretation you follow, different conclusions can be made, however, the things they all have in common is that the son in the follower in the first five stanzas of the poem, however, in the last one, the father has become the follower.
The way that the speaker uses nautical imagery to express his feelings towards his father’s work on the farm, shows that he truly admires him. Just like people believe that sails are beautiful. He believes that his father working is beautiful, “his shoulders globed like a full sail strung”. The way that he says his father was “mapping the furrow exactly” shows that his father was knowledgeable about his work and knew exactly what he was doing.
Last three stanza the speaker describes how as he followed his father, he never really appreciated the work his father did, but he does now, and his father has become the follower. This is when it gets tricky, because you can interpret the way he sees his father as, that now that he is old he cannot work, so he has taken the responsibility of the farm as if it were a cycle. However, another approach is that now that his father is old, he cannot work, and there for monitors his son’s work by “following” him.