"Follower"

In his poem, "Follower", Seamus Heaney uses the diction of his poem as well as the imagery presented in order to differentiate between the speaker's views of his father as a child to those as an adult. Throughout the poem, the speaker describes life with his father as a young child and the ways in which he idolizes his father only to culminate with the disappointment of reversed roles in the end. 

Initially, the speaker describes his father with words suggesting a powerful man, "His shoulders globed", "An expert". It is apparent that the speaker looks up to his father and hopes to someday follow in his footsteps. "I wanted to grow up and plough, to close one eye, stiffen my arm". The speaker uses words such as "nuisance, tripping, falling, stumbled" etc. in order to compare himself with an annoyance which his father cannot rid himself of.

Later, however, the speaker realizes in an air of disappointment, that it is his father which is the nuisance. "But today it is my father who keeps stumbling behind me, and will not go away". The speaker admits that now that his father is older and no longer the strong man described previously in the poem, he is nothing but a nuisance, a 'follower'. "Keeps stumbling behind me", here the author uses images of an old man stumbling behind him in order to demonstrate the reversed role of his father. Once a strong man, the speakers father is now simply a nuisance that he cannot rid himself of. 

Overall, Seamus Heaney is able to accurately portray the growth of his father and the recognition of the speaker that he no longer is the man he previously admired, but rather an old man who is useless.