Follower – Seamus Heaney

விளையாடிக் கற்றுக்கொள்ளுங்கள்

ஆற்றல் சம்பாதிக்க இந்த கேள்விகளுக்குப் பதிலளியுங்கள், பின்னர் மீன் பிடித்து ஆராயுங்கள். கணக்கு தேவையில்லை.

கல்வியாளர்களுக்கு: Follower – Seamus Heaney (English, World Literature)-க்கான தயாரான பாட ஸ்லைடுகள், திருப்புதல் குறிப்புகள் — உங்கள் பாடத்தில் அவற்றைப் பயன்படுத்தவும், அல்லது கற்பவர்கள் நேரலை விளையாட்டாக விளையாடும் ஊடாடும் வகுப்பு செயல்பாடாக தலைப்பை இயக்கவும்.

பாட குறிப்புகள்

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).

ஸ்லைடுகள்

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பதிவு செய்க — இலவசம்உள்நுழைக

பயிற்சி கேள்விகள்

இலவச முன்னோட்டம் — 37-இல் 8 கேள்விகள். அனைத்தையும் பார்க்க பதிவு செய்யவும்.

  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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இந்த தலைப்பிற்கான ஒவ்வொரு கேள்வியையும், ஸ்லைடுகளையும், ஃப்ளாஷ் கார்டுகளையும் மற்றும் திருப்புதல் குறிப்புகளையும் பார்க்க இலவச கணக்கை உருவாக்கவும்.

பதிவு செய்க — இலவசம்உள்நுழைக

முந்தைய தேர்வுகள்

இந்த தலைப்பிற்கான முந்தைய தேர்வு பயிற்சி விரைவில் வருகிறது.
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