In the end of the poem the Follower, the poet ends it very sudden, and leaves the reader puzzled. The end of the poem the poet says, “…It is my father who keeps stumbling behind me, and will not go away” (verse 23-24, stanza 6). These last two statements speak about the poet, as he is older. He is now taken on the tradition of continuing the legacy of farming as his father had done when he was young. When Heaney says he now stumbles behind me, the poet does not literally mean that his father is, but metaphorically instead is. In the past the son has admired his father’s abilities to be able to farm with such elegancy, when time came for him to carry on the tradition that his grandfather and his father had been able to done, the poet stumbles or is afraid that he may forget all the things that he had seen his father done, and the poet tries to recalls from his past life what has his father taught him, so that he could carry the tradition forward. However, the poet is worried that he may not be able to and in a sense it begins to haunt the young poets mind since the feeling and remembrance won’t go away.
The poet feelings stayed mutual through out the whole poems of Follower and Digging. The poet had never had mixed feelings for his father. Throughout the poems the reader was able to get the sense that the poet had truly admired and praised his father tremendously. The son not once had criticised his father but instead tried to learn and carry on the tradition. However, in the end, the son does more than just carry on the tradition; he instead celebrates what his father has done through writing.
In both poems there are signs that Heaney used alliteration, imagery, onomatopoeia and rhyme and then bound them together as a main structure of both poems. He also uses them to describe his father in many different styles. The poet, Heaney was able to portray the descriptions of his characters in his poems to the reader in very unique images. In the poem the Follower, Heaney describes his father in a very nautical manner. As the reader, we first approach this manner in the first stanza, verse 2, when the poet describes his father shoulders as if they were a full sail strung. As the shoulders represent upper body strength for motion to occur, the sail of a boat is more of where the strength occurs to move the boat. As stated before, Heaney description of his father’s eyes are placed very eloquently. He says the eyes are narrowed in an angle to map the ground of where the furrows will be created. A sailor’s job is to navigate the deep seas, but navigation is needed with the help of a map. The sailor takes a close eye of the map to check if the boats path is headed in a straight direction. Heaney’s father make sure that all the furrows will be placed correctly in the right track because he wants to make sure that he can get the best of the potatoes with correct direction and precision and its quite amazing how Heaney places the analogy of his father’s eye with the a sailors skill of map reading.
Both poems, Follower and Digging are transmitted to the reader in different ways. In the poem Follower, Heaney organizes the poem by introducing his father in the first stanza, and begins to describe him. As the reader continues on, we begin to get an idea of what the father does in the field. Towards the end, the son begins to tell his experiences in the field with his father and how he admires him greatly. The son though hopes in the future he be able to carry on the work that his father does, but feels worried he may not be able to. In the poem the Follower, all of the descriptions, experiences and hopes that the son had were portrayed in various ways. There were many active verbs Heaney used such as stumbled, tripping, falling, yapping...etc, when describing the boys experience in the field with his father. Onomatopoeic words were used often throughout the poem to express the point such as clicking...pluck...yapping. The contrast towards the end “I wanted to grow up…” but “all I ever did was follow"; shows the contrast between past and present of the son.
In the poem digging, many feelings, memories and the truth begin to be revealed. In the first stanza, we begin to see where the son has headed to become in the future, a writer and that his strongest weapon is a pen for he feels is his powerful tool. As the reader continues in the middle, many memories of his father and especially his grandfather are shown through their skills. The father best at digging potatoes drills while the grandfather is better in digging turf. Towards the end of the poem, there is a metaphor of digging and roots. This shows how the poet is getting back through his writing, trying to find his own root, his identity, of where the family comes from. The ending of the poem began as it ends, but in the ending the pen was seen as a weapon before, but is now used for digging into the past, present and future and celebrating the tradition that his father and grandfather had done out in the field as well as acknowledge them for their exceptional efforts. The writing style of Heaney in the poem the Digging has a much looser structure than that of Follower. Heaney tries to show that both men were great in strength, but as well that they were expertise in their skills. Heaney uses some colloquial terms such as “By God, the old man could handle a spade.” (Verse 15, stanza 5). Again, as he did in Follower, Heaney uses much onomatopoeia such as "rasping, gravelly, sloppily, squelch and slap" and these words are used greatly in describing both the grandfather and fathers work.