Character analysis
The Horses
in Follower by Seamus Heaney
In Seamus Heaney's poem "Follower," The Horses play a quietly central role, showcasing the father's mastery and the son's deep admiration. These are working farm horses—strong, broad-shouldered animals whose physical presence highlights the father's skill. In the opening stanzas, the horses are depicted straining and sweating as they pull the plough, moving steadily and purposefully under the father's expert guidance. They serve as a living measure of competence: the father controls them with effortless authority, clicking his tongue and directing them with reins looped around his waist, while the young speaker stumbles behind, unable to match their rhythm or the father's command.
The horses also carry symbolic weight alongside their literal function. Their disciplined, forward movement sharply contrasts with the child's awkward steps, reinforcing the poem's themes of admiration and inadequacy. They embody the rural, agrarian world that the father navigates so naturally—a world the speaker longs to join but has yet to master. As the poem shifts in its final stanzas, reversing the roles of leader and follower, the horses fade from the imagery; their absence highlights the transition from the physical, working landscape of childhood memories to the more complex emotional terrain of adult life. Even though they never speak or act on their own, The Horses are essential to the poem's atmosphere of hard, skilled labor and the awe it evokes.
Who is The Horses?
In "Follower," the horses are working farm animals—heavy, broad-shouldered plough horses whose physical labour dominates the poem's opening movement. Heaney renders them with sharp agricultural precision: they strain forward under harness, their flanks presumably sweating with effort as they cut through the soil. They are never named or individualised; they function as a collective presence, a force of nature channelled and disciplined by human skill. Despite this anonymity, they carry enormous weight in the poem's economy of images. Their muscular, purposeful forward motion sets the standard against which every other figure in the poem is measured—most immediately, the fumbling child who follows in the furrow behind them.
What is The Horses's arc and motivation?
As non-human presences, the horses do not possess motivation in any psychological sense, but they undergo a narrative arc defined by presence and absence. In the opening stanzas they are absolutely central—the pivot around which the father's authority and the son's admiration revolve. Their discipline and power serve as the engine of the scene. By the poem's final stanzas, however, when Heaney reverses the generational dynamic and the speaker reflects on how his ageing father now "keeps stumbling / Behind me," the horses have quietly vanished from the imagery altogether. This disappearance holds significant meaning: the world they embody—physical, agrarian, demanding of bodily mastery—has receded, replaced by the more intangible terrain of memory, guilt, and time.
What are The Horses's key moments?
The horses are most vividly present when Heaney describes the father controlling them through reins looped around his waist rather than held in his hands. This detail is crucial: it signals that the father's command over these enormous animals has become so internalised it barely requires conscious gesture. A tongue-click suffices to direct them. Their obedience reflects the father's absorbed expertise rather than the horses' compliance. The contrast with the child, who "stumbled in his hob-nailed wake," is immediate and devastating—the boy cannot keep pace with animals that move as extensions of another man's will. Their labour establishes the poem's sensory world of turned earth, physical effort, and seasonal rhythm, grounding what might otherwise be an entirely abstract meditation on admiration and loss.
What are The Horses's most important relationships?
With the father: The horses are the primary instrument through which the father's mastery is made visible. Heaney shows us skilled management of powerful working animals, which was—and remains—one of the most demanding demonstrations of agricultural competence. Their obedience directly indicates his authority. In this sense, the horses and the father form an almost symbiotic unit: he shapes their movement, and their disciplined response amplifies his expertise.
With the speaker: For the young son, the horses represent the unattainable. Everything he wants—the easy authority, the bodily confidence, the belonging in this landscape—is embodied in these animals and his father's relationship with them. The child stumbles in their wake, unable to match their rhythm. They do not acknowledge him; they simply move forward, making his inadequacy legible by contrast. His expressed wish to "grow up and plough, / To close one eye, stiffen my arm" is fundamentally a wish to one day stand where his father stands—reins at the waist, horses answering to a click.
How is The Horses connected to the other characters?
- The Father
The Horses are the primary instrument of the father's expertise. He controls them with practiced ease—reins looped at his waist, tongue-clicks directing their path—making their obedience a direct index of his mastery. Every detail of the horses' disciplined movement reflects his authority and skill.
- The Speaker (Young Seamus)
The Horses represent everything the young speaker cannot yet command or keep pace with. Their powerful, rhythmic labor highlights the child's clumsiness and sense of inadequacy; he stumbles in their wake, aspiring to the same confident relationship with them that his father effortlessly maintains.
Questions readers ask about The Horses
What role do the horses play in "Follower" by Seamus Heaney?
The horses are working plough animals whose powerful, disciplined movement drives the poem's opening stanzas and establishes its atmosphere of skilled agricultural labour. They are not named or individualised but function as a collective force, straining forward under harness as the father guides them with practiced ease. Their muscular purposefulness sets the standard against which every other figure in the poem—most painfully, the stumbling child—is measured.
How does the father control the horses in "Follower"?
The father controls the horses by looping the reins around his waist rather than gripping them in his hands, and by directing the animals with nothing more than a tongue-click. This detail shows that his command has become so thoroughly internalised it barely requires conscious gesture. The horses' obedience is a direct index of his absorbed, almost effortless expertise.
What do the horses symbolise in "Follower"?
The horses symbolise the agrarian world of physical mastery that the young speaker admires but cannot yet enter. Their disciplined forward motion embodies the bodily confidence, skill, and belonging in the rural landscape that the child longs for. More broadly, they represent a pre-modern way of life governed by hard labour and seasonal rhythm—a world that recedes as the poem moves toward adult reflection and memory.
Why do the horses disappear from the imagery in the final stanzas of "Follower"?
The horses vanish because the poem shifts from the physical, agrarian world of childhood memory to the more intangible emotional terrain of adult life, guilt, and time. Their absence is structurally significant: the forward-moving, labouring world they embody gives way to the poem's elegiac, retrospective gaze. When the speaker reflects on his ageing father now stumbling behind him, the horses' world has already quietly receded.
How do the horses highlight the young speaker's sense of inadequacy in "Follower"?
The horses move with rhythmic, disciplined power as extensions of the father's will, making the child's stumbling all the more apparent by contrast. The boy cannot keep pace with animals that barely register his presence; they simply move forward, rendering his clumsiness legible without ever acknowledging him. His longing to one day plough—to stand where his father stands, reins at the waist—is fundamentally a wish to command the same relationship with them.
What is the relationship between the horses and the father in "Follower"?
The horses and the father form an almost symbiotic unit: he shapes their movement through internalised, near-invisible command, and their disciplined obedience amplifies his authority in return. Heaney makes the father's mastery visible precisely through his management of such enormous, powerful animals, which was one of the most demanding tests of agricultural competence. The horses do not simply obey—they reflect him.
Are the horses individualised characters in "Follower"?
No—the horses are never named or distinguished from one another; they operate as an anonymous collective presence rather than individual characters. Heaney's choice is deliberate: their anonymity keeps attention on the human drama of admiration and inadequacy while letting the animals function as a symbol of the broader agrarian world. Their power and purpose matter far more to the poem than any individual identity.
How does the tension between the horses' forward motion and the poem's retrospective mood work in "Follower"?
The horses always move forward—purposeful, disciplined, cutting through soil—while the poem itself turns steadily backward into memory, loss, and guilt. This tension is central to the poem's emotional effect: the driving, physical momentum of the agricultural world the horses represent is precisely what cannot be recovered. Their disappearance from the final stanzas marks the point at which forward motion gives way entirely to the speaker's elegiac, rearward gaze.
Use this in your essay
Mastery and embodied skill: How do the horses function as a measure of competence in "Follower"? Explore how Heaney uses animal management to make abstract authority concrete and visible.
Presence and absence as structural device: Analyse the significance of the horses disappearing from the poem's final stanzas. What does their absence convey about the shift from childhood memory to adult reflection?
The agrarian world as lost ideal: To what extent do the horses represent a rural, pre-modern way of life that the speaker admires but knows he cannot fully inhabit? Consider the poem alongside Heaney's broader pastoral concerns.
Contrast and inadequacy: How does Heaney use the horses' rhythmic, disciplined movement to heighten the child's sense of clumsiness and longing? What does this contrast reveal about the nature of admiration?
Symbolism of forward motion: The horses always move forward; the poem ultimately turns backward into memory. Build a thesis around this tension between the horses' momentum and the poem's retrospective, elegiac gaze.