follower

• title - “follower”

  • suggestion of power imbalance
  • vague title which may entice reader
  • relationship between two people
  • admiration & identity
• “My father worked with a horse-plough,”

  • “my” - possessive pronoun sets focus on relationship
  • ”horse-plough” - farming environment
• “His shoulders globed like a full sail strung”

  • “globed” - father seems larger than life to son; size & strength implies God-like
  • ”sail strung” - sibilance; smooth and deliberate work of father
• “Between the shafts and the furrow.”
• “The horse strained at his clicking tongue”

  • “his clicking tongue” - control + power of father
• “An expert. He would set the wing”

  • “expert” - all-knowing; admiration + idolisation
  • ”An expert.” - caesura
• “And fit the bright steel-painted sock.”

  • “steel-painted sock” - mimetic; quick, short sounds shows swift + precise skill of father
• “The sod rolled over without breaking.”

  • “without breaking” - shows father’s experience
• “At the head rig, with a single pluck”
• “Of reins, the sweating team turned round”
• “And back into the land. His eye”
• “Narrowed and angled at the ground,”
• “Mapping the furrow exactly.”

  • “mapping” - sailing & navigating links back to “globed”
  • ”exactly” - sharp sounds suggest precision
• “I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake”

  • struggling to live up to father’s skills; inferior to him
  • “stumbled” and “hob” are plosive - contrasts to smooth sibilance of father
  • “stumbled” - not at ease in landscape - inexperienced
• “fell sometimes on the polished sod”

  • “fell” implies he is physically lower than father - indirect father/son comparison
  • “polished sod” - juxtaposition
• “sometimes he rode me on his back”

  • “he rode me” - passive; contrast to father’s active role in childhood & poem
• “dipping and rising to his plod”

  • “plod” suggests heaviness; power + strength
• “I wanted to grow up and plough”

  • idolisation; wants to be like father
• “To close one eye, stiffen my arm”
• “All I ever did was follow”

  • shorter line - regret and pause for respect
  • “follow” implies desire to learn, emulate & be close to admired parent
• “In his broad shadow round the farm”

  • “broad shadow” - overshadowing; inferiority
  • “broad shadow” also suggests father’s strength and protection, as well as authority
• “I was a nuisance, tripping, falling”

  • “was“ - reflective
• “Yapping always. But today”

  • “yapping” suggests small, pet-like and annoying
  • ”today” - volta; change in rhyme too
• “It is my father who keeps stumbling”

  • ”stumbling” - present tense; change in time
  • poignant representation of shifting dynamics of age and dependency in a family
• “Behind me, and will not go away.”

  • “behind me” - role reversal
  • ”will not go away” - guilt, karma, annoying, CONTRAST
  • the fact the father “will not go away” suggests a poignant tenacity, a desire to remain close and relevant even as his physical abilities start to decline
• • lines tend to be around 8 syllables; stable relationship
  • iambic tetrameter however this is inconsistent; incomplete aspect to relationship
• • ABAB rhyme scheme but with one perfect & one slant rhyme
  • perfect rhyme represents father and slant rhyme represents son
• themes:

  • family relationships: strong bonds & admiration
  • desire & longing
  • getting older
  • memory
  • nature
• follower vs bywm

  similarities - focus on childhood with parent; chronologically focus over long period of time & changes that occur in that period
• follower vs bywm

  differences - duffy includes the time before she was born too; follower in 1st person; duffy addresses her mother
• follower vs cmg

  similarities - idolising family member; extended metaphor of extreme sports
• follower vs cmg

  differences - follower has constant abab with rigid quantains with iambic pentameter; cmg has loose structure in free verse; follower reflects on childhood; cmg speaks in present tense from child’s perspective
• follower vs eden rock

  similarities - undeniable admiration for speaker’s parents; both written from male child’s perspective; reflection on childhood memories; support & encouragement to child from parents; orderly structure of four line stanzas - reflects stable relationship; vague end line
• follower vs eden rock

  differences - eden rock focuses on speaker mulling over specific childhood memory; follower explores relationship during childhood in general