Follower – Seamus Heaney

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教育者の方へ： Follower – Seamus Heaney（English、World Literature）向けのすぐ使えるレッスンスライド, 復習ノート — レッスンで使うか、学習者がライブゲームとして遊ぶインタラクティブなクラス活動としてトピックを実施できます。

レッスンノート

The poem at a glance

  • "Follower" by Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939–2013, Nobel Prize 1995), from×Death of a Naturalist×(1966).
  • The speaker remembers his father ploughing with horses on their farm in County Derry, Northern Ireland, and himself as a small boy following behind.
  • The child admired his father's skill and wanted to be like him — but in the last stanza the roles reverse: now the ageing father "keeps stumbling / Behind me".
  • Six quatrains, mostly in iambic tetrameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme (often half-rhyme).
  • Key ideas: admiration and hero-worship, skill and tradition, growing up, ageing and role reversal, guilt.

Stanzas 1–3: the expert

  • "His shoulders globed like a full sail strung / Between the shafts and the furrow": a simile making the father powerful and graceful, like a ship under sail.
  • "The horses strained at his clicking tongue": effortless control over powerful animals.
  • "An expert." — a two-word sentence; the caesura and the blunt phrase show the boy's total admiration.
  • Technical vocabulary — "wing", "steel-pointed sock", "headrig" — shows the precise craft of ploughing (and the speaker's pride in knowing it).
  • "The sod rolled over without breaking"; "with a single pluck / Of reins"; "His eye / Narrowed and angled at the ground, / Mapping the furrow exactly" — precision, economy, mastery.

Stanzas 4–5: the child following

  • "I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake": the boy trails behind like a small boat in a ship's wake — extending the sail image.
  • "Fell sometimes on the polished sod"; "Sometimes he rode me on his back / Dipping and rising to his plod" — tender, rhythmic memory.
  • "I wanted to grow up and plough, / To close one eye, stiffen my arm": the boy imitates his father's gestures.
  • "All I ever did was follow / In his broad shadow round the farm": the title word; the father's shadow suggests both protection and being overshadowed.

Stanza 6: the reversal

  • "I was a nuisance, tripping, falling, / Yapping always": the adult speaker judges his younger self harshly — like a little dog.
  • "But today": the volta — the only move into the present tense.
  • "It is my father who keeps stumbling / Behind me, and will not go away": the old father now follows the son — physically (age, dependence) and in memory (he haunts the poet's mind).
  • The echo of "stumbling" from stanza 4 completes the reversal.
  • "will not go away" is ambiguous: irritation, guilt, love, or the father's lasting influence — perhaps all at once.

Form and sound

  • Regular quatrains and steady rhythm mimic the even furrows and plodding pace of ploughing.
  • Half-rhymes (wake / back, sod / plod, plough / follow) — near-matches, like a son who can never quite match the father.
  • Enjambment carries sentences across lines like the plough across a field.
  • Short sentences — "An expert." — stand out against the flow.
  • Sound: "clicking tongue" (onomatopoeia), "hob-nailed", "plod" — heavy, earthy sounds.

Themes and comparisons

  • Admiration of a parent; the child's desire to imitate.
  • Tradition and change: Heaney became a poet, not a farmer — he "follows" with a pen, not a plough (see his poem "Digging").
  • Time and ageing: the cycle of care reverses.
  • Memory and guilt: the father "will not go away".
  • Comparisons: "Childhood" (children and the old), "Praise Song for My Mother" (parent praised), "My Parents" (parents and childhood).

スライド

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練習問題

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  1. 1.Who wrote 'Follower'?

    Easy
    • ASeamus Heaney
    • BPhilip Larkin
    • CRobert Browning
    • DStephen Spender

  2. 2.What is the father doing in the opening stanzas?

    Easy
    • AFishing on a boat
    • BBuilding a wall
    • CDriving a tractor
    • DPloughing with horses

  3. 3."His shoulders globed like a full sail strung" is…

    Easy
    • Aonomatopoeia
    • Ba rhetorical question
    • Ca simile
    • Da metaphor

  4. 4.What does the sail simile suggest about the father?

    Medium
    • AThat he is lost
    • BStrength, power and grace
    • CWeakness
    • DThat he is a sailor

  5. 5.What is the effect of the two-word sentence 'An expert.'?

    Medium
    • AIt states the boy's admiration bluntly and emphatically
    • BIt shows the father is a scientist
    • CIt is sarcastic
    • DIt introduces a new character

  6. 6.What does 'The sod rolled over without breaking' show?

    Medium
    • AThe soil is too hard
    • BThe horses are lazy
    • CThe plough is broken
    • DThe father's precise skill

  7. 7.Which words are technical ploughing terms?

    Medium
    • Anuisance, yapping, tripping
    • Bglobed, strung, strained
    • Cwing, sock, headrig
    • Dsail, wake, shadow

  8. 8.What did the boy want?

    Medium
    • ATo ride the horses alone
    • BTo grow up and plough like his father
    • CTo leave the farm
    • DTo become a sailor

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