Curated set · answers marked
In Seamus Heaney's poem "Follower," what role reversal occurs by the final stanza?
Rationale
For most of the poem, the speaker, as a child, stumbles along behind his skilled father while he ploughs. By the final stanza, the roles have flipped—the father is now the one who "will not go away" and is stumbling behind the adult speaker. This shift highlights themes of aging, dependency, and the weight of the past.
Question: In Seamus Heaney's poem "Follower," what role does the speaker's father have that the speaker admires so deeply in the opening stanzas?
Rationale
In "Follower," the speaker portrays his father as a talented ploughman who skillfully guides horses through the fields. The father's expertise is illustrated with vivid, respectful detail — his "shoulders globed like a full sail strung," his knack for setting "the wing / and fitting the bright steel-pointed sock," and his ability to create a perfect, single-furrow ploughing. This depiction of agricultural talent sharply contrasts with the poem's ending, where we see the aging father who "will not go away" and now struggles to keep up with the speaker.