The Complete Guide to Follower

A first look at the poem

Follower is a poem by Seamus Heaney, from his first collection, Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966. It is the speaker's memory of watching the father plough a field with a horse-drawn plough when the speaker was a small child. The poem names the ploughman as the speaker's father but never says whether the speaker is a son or a daughter; many readers take the speaker to be a son, and often Heaney himself, but an essay should rest on what the poem says.

The father is an expert. His shoulders swell like a full sail; the horses strain at the click of his tongue; he sets the plough precisely, turns the team with a single tug of the reins, and keeps the furrow perfectly straight with a narrowed eye. The child stumbles behind him in the deep prints of his boots, sometimes falls, and sometimes rides on the father's back. The child wants to grow up and plough just like him. But all the child ever does is follow, a nuisance always tripping and chattering.

Then the poem turns. Today, the speaker says, it is the father who keeps stumbling behind the grown child, and will not go away.

The poem is in the Love and Relationships cluster on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702). It is in copyright, and no quotation from it could be checked against the poet's or publisher's own text, so this guide quotes nothing and describes every moment precisely. If the poem is printed on your paper, quote it from there.

What just happened

• A speaker remembers an expert father ploughing.
• As a child the speaker followed, stumbling, wanting to be like him.
• Now the father stumbles behind the speaker.

Why it matters. The poem moves from admiration to a reversal of roles.

What to remember

• Published in 1966.
• The reversal comes at the very end.

The title: Follower

The title names a role rather than a person. Who is the follower? At first, clearly the child: the child follows the father around the farm, stumbling in his wake, wanting to be like him.

But by the end of the poem the father is following the grown child. The title therefore points both ways. It describes the child the speaker was, and the old man the father has become.

A follower can also be someone who follows a leader or an example. The child wanted to follow the father into ploughing, and the poem never shows that wish fulfilled. The title may hold that sense too: a follower who did not, in the end, follow.

Keep the title in mind as you read. Its meaning shifts as the poem does, and an essay that notices this has already found the poem's structure.

What just happened

• The follower is first the child.
• By the end, it is the father.
• It may also mean following an example — which the speaker never managed.

Why it matters. The title's meaning reverses as the poem's roles do.

What to remember

• Who is the follower?
• The title points both ways.

Stanza one: the father as a ship

The poem begins with the father at work behind a horse-drawn plough. His shoulders swell out like a full sail strung between the shafts — the poles the horse is harnessed between — and the furrow, the trench the plough cuts.

The sailing image is striking. The father is like a ship under full sail: large, powerful, filled with force, moving steadily forward. This is how he looks to a small child — huge and unstoppable.

The horses strain at the click of his tongue. He controls them with the smallest sound. His authority is effortless and complete.

The stanza establishes the father as a figure of strength and command, seen through a child's admiring eyes.

What just happened

• The father's shoulders swell like a full sail.
• He is a ship moving steadily forward.
• The horses obey the click of his tongue.

Why it matters. The first stanza makes the father powerful and commanding.

What to remember

• Sailing simile = strength.
• A child's-eye view.

Stanza two: an expert

The second stanza begins with a single word of judgement: the father was an expert. The plainness of the statement shows the child's absolute admiration. There is no doubt about it.

Then the speaker shows the expertise in technical detail. The father sets the wing of the plough and fits the bright, pointed steel sock — parts of the plough that cut and turn the soil. The sod, the turned earth, rolls over without breaking.

The technical vocabulary matters. The speaker names the parts of the plough exactly, as only someone who watched closely and cared could. Naming the craft precisely is a way of honouring it — and honouring the father who mastered it.

The image of the soil turning over smoothly, without breaking, shows perfect work. Nothing goes wrong under the father's hands.

What just happened

• The stanza opens: the father was an expert.
• Technical words name the parts of the plough.
• The soil turns over perfectly.

Why it matters. The second stanza shows respect through precise naming.

What to remember

• Craft vocabulary = respect.
• Perfect work.

Stanza three: the turn and the eye

At the headland — the strip at the edge of the field where the plough team turns — the father turns the sweating horses round with a single pull of the reins and sends them back into the land. One movement is enough. The economy of the action is a sign of mastery.

His eye narrows and angles at the ground, mapping the furrow exactly. The father works like a surveyor, measuring with his eye. He is concentrated, precise and in control.

These details build the portrait of a man who does difficult work with calm skill. The horses sweat; the father does not seem to strain. Everything is under control.

This is the peak of the speaker's admiration. The father is skilful, powerful and completely in command of the animals, the plough and the field.

What just happened

• One pull of the reins turns the team.
• The father's eye maps the furrow exactly.
• He is calm and in control.

Why it matters. The third stanza completes the portrait of the expert.

What to remember

• Economy of movement = mastery.
• The eye like a surveyor's.

Stanza four: the stumbling child

Now the speaker appears as a child, stumbling in the father's wake — the trail left behind him, like the wake behind a ship — in the deep marks of his hob-nailed boots. The child sometimes falls on the smooth, freshly turned soil.

The image continues the sailing simile: the father is a ship, the child a small thing struggling in its wake. The contrast between them is complete. The father moves steadily; the child stumbles and falls.

Sometimes the father carries the child on his back, dipping and rising with his slow, heavy steps. This is a tender moment. The father's strength, which drives the plough, is also used to carry his child. The rhythm of his walking rocks the child.

Notice the verb of stumbling here. It will return at the end of the poem, and its return is the key to the poem's meaning.

What just happened

• The child stumbles in the father's wake.
• The child sometimes falls on the turned soil.
• Sometimes the father carries the child on his back.

Why it matters. The fourth stanza shows the child's clumsiness and the father's care.

What to remember

• The wake continues the ship image.
• Remember the stumbling.

Stanzas five and six: wanting, following, reversal

The child wanted to grow up and plough, to close one eye and stiffen an arm as the father did. The child wanted to copy not just the work but the father's very gestures.

But all the child ever did was follow in the father's broad shadow around the farm. The shadow suggests the father's size and greatness, and the child's smallness inside it. The speaker admits to having been a nuisance: tripping, falling, always chattering.

Then comes the turn. But today, the speaker says, it is the father who keeps stumbling behind the speaker, and will not go away. The tense changes to the present. The father is now old. He is the one who stumbles; he is the follower.

The last phrase — that he will not go away — is open. It may mean the old father depends on his grown child and is always there; it may mean the father's memory stays in the speaker's mind; it may mean a sense of guilt or debt that the speaker cannot escape. The ending asks the reader to decide.

What just happened

• The child wanted to be exactly like the father.
• All the child did was follow, a nuisance in his shadow.
• Today the father stumbles behind the speaker and will not go away.

Why it matters. The final stanzas reverse the poem's relationship.

What to remember

• Tense shift = the turn.
• Will not go away: burden, love or guilt?

Close study: the reversal

The reversal in the final lines is the most important moment in the poem. Study how Heaney prepares it and how it changes everything before it.

First, he prepares it through repetition. The child stumbles in stanza four; the father stumbles in the last stanza. The same action, given to the other person, makes the reversal exact and noticeable.

Second, he holds it back. Five stanzas are given to the father's strength and the child's weakness. The reversal arrives suddenly, marked by a turn into the present. The reader is surprised, as the speaker perhaps was surprised to find the father grown old.

Third, it rereads the whole poem. The powerful ploughman of the memory is now an old man who stumbles. The admiration of the earlier stanzas becomes poignant: we know now that the strength was temporary. And the father who carried the child on his back may now be a weight the speaker must carry. A paragraph on the reversal can therefore cover structure, language and meaning together.

What just happened

• Repetition of stumbling makes the reversal exact.
• It is held back to the end, marked by the present tense.
• It rereads the whole poem.

Why it matters. The reversal is the poem's key.

What to remember

• Prepare, hold back, reread.
• Carrying and being carried.

Close study: the language of the plough

Heaney fills the first half of the poem with the technical words of horse ploughing. The father works between the shafts; he sets the wing and the pointed steel sock of the plough; he cuts the furrow; he turns the team at the headland; he keeps the furrow straight. These words come from a working farm, not from a poetry book.

Why use them? First, they make the scene concrete and real. Second, they show the speaker's knowledge: the child watched closely enough to learn the names. Third, they are a form of respect. To name the parts of a craft exactly is to honour the craft and the man who mastered it.

The technical words also contrast with the child's own clumsiness. The father's world is precise and ordered; the child's is tripping and falling. The language itself shows the gap between them.

When you write about the language, connect the vocabulary to the speaker's feelings: precision as admiration, naming as tribute.

What just happened

• Technical words from a working farm.
• They show knowledge and respect.
• They contrast with the child's clumsiness.

Why it matters. Precise vocabulary is the speaker's tribute.

What to remember

• Naming = honouring.
• Order against clumsiness.

Close study: carried and carrying

One small detail in the fourth stanza deserves close attention: the father sometimes carries the child on his back, dipping and rising with the rhythm of his slow steps. It is easy to read past, but it prepares the ending.

In the memory, the strong father carries the weak child. The image is tender: the father's strength, which drives the plough and controls the horses, is also used gently, to lift a tired or fallen child. The rocking motion — up and down with each heavy stride — is like being carried on a boat, continuing the ship imagery.

At the end, the roles reverse. The father is now the one who stumbles, and the grown child is now the one who must, in some sense, carry him — whether by looking after him, by remembering him, or by bearing the weight of what is owed to him. The poem never says the speaker carries the father, but the earlier image makes the reader think of it.

A paragraph on this detail can make a strong structural argument: the poem plants an image of care early so that the ending's reversal has an emotional echo. The child once carried becomes the adult who carries.

What just happened

• The father carries the child on his back.
• His strength is used tenderly.
• The ending implies the speaker must now carry the father.

Why it matters. One detail prepares the ending's reversal.

What to remember

• Carried becomes carrying.
• Care echoes across the poem.

The child's view and the adult's voice

Follower is told by an adult remembering childhood, and the poem blends the two points of view. Much of it sees the father through a child's eyes: huge, powerful, an expert who never makes a mistake. But the voice that describes him is an adult's, with an adult's vocabulary and an adult's honesty about the speaker's younger self.

The child's view gives the father his heroic size. The adult's voice gives the poem its precision and its self-awareness: the grown child can name the parts of the plough, and can see that, as a small child, the speaker was a nuisance.

The final lines belong entirely to the adult. Only the grown speaker, looking back, could see the father stumbling behind. The shift from the child's view to the adult's present is part of the reversal: the poem's own perspective grows up.

What just happened

• A child's view of the father: heroic.
• An adult's voice: precise and honest.
• The ending belongs to the adult.

Why it matters. The poem's perspective grows up as its roles reverse.

What to remember

• Two points of view.
• The ending is adult.

Form: steady quatrains

The poem is written in six quatrains — four-line stanzas — with a regular rhyme scheme. Some rhymes are full; others are half-rhymes, close in sound but not exact.

The regular form suits the subject. Ploughing is steady, repeated work, back and forth across a field in straight lines. The orderly stanzas move like the plough, line after line.

The half-rhymes add a slight unevenness. Some readers hear in them the child's stumbling within the father's ordered world, or the imperfection of memory. Use this idea carefully, attached to the poem's meaning.

The form also makes the final reversal stand out. After five stanzas of steady past-tense description, the sudden present tense of the ending breaks the pattern and catches the reader.

What just happened

• Six regular quatrains.
• Full rhymes and half-rhymes.
• Steady like ploughing; the ending breaks the pattern.

Why it matters. Form mirrors the work and sharpens the reversal.

What to remember

• Order = the plough.
• Half-rhyme = imperfection.

Structure: admiration, then reversal

The structure is simple and powerful. Stanzas one to three describe the father's skill. Stanza four introduces the child. Stanza five gives the child's wish and failure. The last lines give the reversal.

The movement is from father to child, from past to present, from strength to weakness. The poem's centre of attention shifts as the relationship shifts.

The poem's grammar follows the same path. In the early stanzas the father is the subject of the verbs — he works, he sets, he turns, he maps. Later the child becomes the subject — the child stumbles, falls, wants, follows. At the end the father is the subject again, but now of stumbling.

The structure also follows a life. It begins with the father at the height of his strength and the child at the smallest, and ends years later with the child grown and the father old. Decades pass in a single turn.

An essay can argue that the structure enacts the passage of time: the poem, like life, moves from one generation's strength to the next.

What just happened

• Father's skill, then the child, then the reversal.
• From past to present, strength to weakness.
• A lifetime in six stanzas.

Why it matters. Structure enacts the passing of time.

What to remember

• Centre of attention shifts.
• Decades in one turn.

Key words

Some words need precise meanings. Shafts are the poles between which a horse is harnessed to pull a plough. A furrow is the trench the plough cuts in the soil. The wing and the sock are parts of the plough — the sock is the pointed steel tip that cuts into the ground. The sod is the turned earth.

The headland is the strip at the edge of a field where the plough team turns. A wake is the trail of disturbed water behind a ship. Hob-nailed boots have heavy nails in their soles for grip and wear.

Precise meanings support precise analysis. Wake extends the father-as-ship simile and puts the child in the turbulence behind him. Headland shows the father's control at the hardest moment of the work, the turn.

Use these words in your own essay where they help you make a point about the speaker's admiration or about the craft.

What just happened

• shafts, furrow, wing, sock, sod.
• headland, wake, hob-nailed.
• Wake extends the ship simile.

Why it matters. Exact meanings make analysis precise.

What to remember

• Use the words to make points.
• Wake = the child behind the ship.

The world behind the poem

Seamus Heaney grew up on a small farm in County Derry, Northern Ireland. He became one of the most celebrated poets of his age and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Follower was published in 1966 in his first collection, Death of a Naturalist, which looks back at a rural childhood.

The ploughing in the poem is done with horses. On small farms this was skilled, demanding work requiring strength and judgement. By the middle of the twentieth century, tractors were replacing horses, so the poem records a way of working that was disappearing.

Heaney did not become a farmer; he became a writer. For readers who connect the poem with Heaney's own farming childhood, this adds weight to the speaker's admission that all the child ever did was follow — and offers a reading of the ending: the father who will not go away may be the path not taken, following the speaker through a different life.

Using context. In an essay: if, like many readers, you connect the speaker with Heaney, who did not follow his father into farming but chose a different life, the father who keeps stumbling behind the speaker at the end can be read as a debt or a conscience as well as an old man — present the link as a reading tied to the final lines.

What just happened

• Heaney grew up on a farm in Northern Ireland.
• Horse ploughing was a vanishing craft.
• Heaney became a writer, not a farmer.

Why it matters. Context opens the guilt reading of the ending.

What to remember

• Attach context to the reversal.
• Present it as a reading.

Readings to weigh

A tribute reading sees the poem as a loving portrait of a skilled father and a child's admiration. The ending adds tenderness: the grown child now cares for the father who once cared for the child.

A burden reading emphasises the ending's discomfort. The father who keeps stumbling behind and will not go away sounds like a weight the speaker cannot put down. Love here includes duty and fatigue.

A guilt reading uses the context of the poet's different life, read into the speaker. The father following the speaker is a conscience or sense of debt for the path not taken. All three readings are supported by the ambiguous last phrase; an essay should choose one and acknowledge the others.

Whatever you choose, ground it in the reversal of stumbling and in the change from past to present.

What just happened

• Tribute: love and care.
• Burden: duty and fatigue.
• Guilt: the path not taken.

Why it matters. The ambiguous ending supports all three.

What to remember

• Choose and acknowledge.
• Ground it in the reversal.

Comparing Follower

Eden Rock is a strong partner: both poems look back at parents from adulthood. The father in Heaney's poem ends behind the speaker, stumbling, a presence the speaker cannot shake off; Causley's parents wait calmly ahead across a stream, inviting their grown child over.

Climbing My Grandfather shares a child's physical, admiring relationship with an older male relative, built through extended imagery — a mountain rather than a ship. Walking Away shows the parent's view of a child moving away; Mother, any distance shows a grown child leaving the mother behind.

Use this in an essay. Both Heaney and Waterhouse present a child's admiration for an older man through extended physical imagery, but Heaney's father, first a ship under full sail with the child stumbling in his wake, ends as an old man stumbling behind his grown child, while Waterhouse's grandfather remains a mountain the child climbs to the summit — so one poem lets time reverse the admiration and the other preserves it.

What just happened

• Eden Rock: parents ahead against a father behind.
• Climbing My Grandfather: admiration through physical imagery.
• Walking Away and Mother, any distance: separation.

Why it matters. Comparison is the task itself.

What to remember

• Compare direction and position.
• Compare extended imagery.

A model comparative paragraph

Use this in an essay. Both poets look back at parents from adulthood, but they place them on opposite sides of the speaker. Causley's parents are ahead of the speaker, young again on the far side of a stream, calmly beckoning; the poem imagines the future as a return to them. The father in Heaney's poem is behind the speaker: once a figure of strength whose shoulders swelled like a full sail while the child stumbled in his wake, he is now an old man who keeps stumbling behind his grown child and will not go away. Causley's parents offer a welcome; Heaney's ploughman has become a weight. One poem looks forward to reunion, the other back at a reversal it cannot undo.

How it works: a comparative claim about position; precise described moments from both poems; a sharp final difference. Description replaces quotation without losing precision.

Practise a paragraph like this with Walking Away as the partner, and time yourself at about eight to ten minutes.

What just happened

• Claim about where each poem places the parent.
• Described moments from both.
• A sharp difference.

Why it matters. Comparison must argue.

What to remember

• Claim — moment — effect — difference.
• Describe exactly.

Grade 9 moves on this poem

Top answers read the reversal as the key, trace the repeated stumbling, and treat the craft vocabulary as a form of feeling.

Grade 9 upgrade. Instead of: The father is good at ploughing.

Write: Heaney's speaker honours the father through exact technical vocabulary — shafts, furrow, wing, headland — so precision becomes a form of tribute to a craft the child could only watch.

Grade 9 upgrade. Instead of: At the end the father is old.

Write: The verb of stumbling, first given to the child behind the father, returns for the father behind the grown child, so the reversal is exact and rereads five stanzas of admiration as a picture of time's cost.

Grade 9 upgrade. Instead of: The ending is sad.

Write: The final phrase is open: the father who will not go away may be an ageing dependant, a lasting memory, or the speaker's conscience for the life the child did not follow — and the poem lets all three stand.

Each upgrade explains a method, its effect and why it matters.

What just happened

• Read the reversal as the key.
• Trace the stumbling.
• Treat craft vocabulary as feeling.

Why it matters. These habits lift an answer into the top band.

What to remember

• Exact reversal.
• Precision as tribute.

The moments to carry

If you choose Follower from memory, carry a set of precisely described moments. Describe each closely enough that an examiner can recognise it.

Ten moments for the whole poem

• The father's shoulders swelling like a full sail between the shafts and the furrow.
• The horses straining at the click of his tongue.
• The plain judgement that he was an expert.
• The soil turning over without breaking.
• One pull of the reins turning the sweating team at the headland.
• His eye narrowed, mapping the furrow exactly.
• The child stumbling in the father's wake and sometimes falling.
• The father carrying the child on his back.
• The child wanting to plough like him, but only ever following in his shadow.
• Today, the father stumbling behind the grown child and not going away.

For each, prepare one sentence of analysis and one link to another poem: the full sail to Waterhouse's mountain; the stumbling to Day-Lewis's hesitant child; the reversal to Causley's parents waiting ahead.

What just happened

• Ten precisely described moments.
• One analysis for each.
• One link for each.

Why it matters. Precise description carries a closed-book essay.

What to remember

• Describe closely.
• Cover the reversal.

In the exam

If Follower is printed, read it twice. Mark the sailing simile, the craft vocabulary, the child's stumbling, the shadow, and the reversal in the present. Decide your argument before choosing a partner. Because it is printed, you may quote it from the paper.

If you choose it from memory, carry its shape — the expert, the stumbling child, the wish, the reversal — and your ten moments. Write a comparative thesis first, then three or four paragraphs with both poems and a method in each.

Put context in single clauses: horse ploughing as a vanishing craft, a poet who chose a different life, offered as a reading. Avoid the two traps: treating it only as a happy memory, and missing the final lines.

End your essay by returning to the reversal and saying what the comparison shows about parents and children over time.

What just happened

• Mark the simile, vocabulary, stumbling and reversal.
• Thesis first; both poems in every paragraph.
• Context in clauses.

Why it matters. A plan turns the reversal into your argument.

What to remember

• Don't miss the ending.
• Trace the stumbling.