A Comparative Analysis of 'Digging' and 'Follower' by Seamus Heaney

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GCSE English

2001/2002  

SEG EXAMINATION BOARD

Coursework Assignment: Poetry Post 1914

A Comparative Analysis of ‘Digging’ and

‘Follower’ by Seamus Heaney

In considering these two poems, it is important to recognise their context within Irish literature and the history of the country.  Many critics, including Robert Lowell, deem Seamus Heaney to be ‘the most important Irish poet since Yeats’.  The Northern Ireland disputes between the Catholics and Protestants have often inspired Irish literature.  William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney were both awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for work derived from their experience of the struggles.  

Yeats believed his poems and plays could ‘engender a national unity capable of transfiguring the Irish nation’ often through themes deeply rooted in Irish history and mythology.  Heaney also had great interest in the conflicts, and felt himself to be ‘symbolically placed’ deep in the cultural divide, since his birth in 1939.  He spent his childhood as the eldest in a strongly Roman Catholic family, living on a farm that bordered a large Protestant estate in Belfast.  However, unlike Yeats, who hoped his work would be capable of unifying the Catholic and Protestant cultures, Heaney simply provided a much-acclaimed account of the tragedies, unbiased of any political inclination.  His work typically encompasses two main themes: feelings of anger and grievance for those whom he lost as victims to the country’s divide, and recollections of his childhood.

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‘Follower’ and ‘Digging’ are both poems about his experiences as a boy.  The verse incorporates his renowned use of colloquial language and agricultural terms, such as ‘sods’ and ‘furrow’.  This use of expression makes his poems more accessible to those who relate to his characteristically Irish upbringing in a farming community.

Seamus Heaney is sometimes compared to the English poet and novelist, Thomas Hardy, for his rich rural imagery, used to convey universal themes.  However, in these two poems this imagery is used to communicate the more personal aspects of character and relationships.  In ‘Follower’, his father’s precise ...

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