One of the main themes in the ‘Follower’ is that the son looks up to his father and wants to follow in his footsteps by doing his job when he is older. We know this because the son says, ‘An expert’, also he says, ‘the horses strained at his clicking tongue’. This suggests he is an expert, very good at his job and can control the horse just by clicking his tongue. He does not need to use equipment or even words.
The title ‘Follower’ is important as the poem is about a young boy following and watching his dad work. It is also important, as the young boy wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and carry on his job for him when he is older. Our understanding of the title ‘Follower’ alters at the end of the poem when the father is now the ‘follower’ of his son and is making sure he does his job correct. The title ‘Strongman’ is important in the other poem as the son describes his father as being very physically powerful and superhero like. The characters switch roles jus like in ‘Follower’ so the father is now the opposite to the title and is very weak and perhaps the son is the strong one now as he is looking after his father. So the role switches in each poem are also similar.
Heavey conveys his father’s skill as a ploughman by the use of all the technical terms he uses to describe the ploughing equipment. It makes him sound like a professional and even ‘an expert’. He also conveys his father’s skill by saying, ‘angled’ and ‘mapping’. This gives the impression that he is so experienced and skilled that he doesn’t need equipment to help him and he is in tune with the nature and surroundings. He has great control of the horses too, as it says he can tell them where to go just by clicking his tongue, ‘the horses strained at his clicking tongue’. Also the simile, ‘his shoulders globed like a full sail strung’ is saying he is broad and is being compared to a ship. His movement is powerful and graceful.
On the other hand in ‘Strongman’ there isn’t the same emphasis on skill, as he is looking after his son not so much teaching him. Although it does mention that he is a carpenter and that job takes a lot of skill.
In ‘Follower’ the father’s physical strength is conveyed by the writer saying, ‘sometimes he rode me on his back’. This suggests he has a lot of physical power as he is doing his tiring and hard job but can still hold his sons weight on his back. Also it says, ‘in his broad shadow’. Broad shadow implies that he is very muscular and has a huge figure.
In ‘Strongman’ the father’s physical strength is conveyed by the writer saying, ‘home from work, would stretch his arms and hang his five sons from them’. The writer is exaggerating his strength. ‘Turning like a roundabout’ this suggests his father is very wide and moves with a lot of power. Then the writer describes him as being as strong as wood by saying, ‘chest like a barrel’ and ‘a neck that was like holding on to a tree’. This gives the impression he is broad and solid and also implies he has a strong, muscular neck that was like a tree trunk.
The poet suggests that there is a close bond between father and son by the son’s ambition when he is an adult. He wants to grow up to be like his father and do the same job that his father does. He says at the start, ‘My father worked with a horse-plough’. The son is proud to say that he is his father. ‘Sometimes he rode me on his back’, even though he is working very hard at his job, which takes a lot of work, he still makes time to have fun with his son at the same time. ‘I was a nuisance, tripping, falling, yapping always’. Even though his son was small and annoying as he was always falling, his father carried on with his job and did not tell him off. This suggests that the father and son have a close bond.
This is also true of ‘Strongman’ because in the first verse the son says, ‘turning like a roundabout’. This gives the impression his father was fun and exciting. Other things he mentions which make his father seem fun are, ‘with a neck that was like holding on to a tree’. This conveys that him and his father would play a lot and he would let his son climb over him, as he would with a tree. Another way we know that father and son have a close bond is ‘Home from work, would stretch his arms and hang his five sons from them’, this implies that even after a day of work he still wants to play with his sons and this shows that he is very caring.
The qualities that both fathers have are they are both caring as even though they are working or have been working they still make time to play with their sons. I don’t detect much difference between the fathers but the father in ‘Strongman’ seems to play with his son more as with the father in ‘Follower’ he seems to care more about is job.
The narrator’s feelings have changed in the last three lines about his father as once before he says, ‘I was a nuisance, but today it is my father who keeps stumbling behind me and will not go away’. He has gone from admiring his father and following him around to finding him annoying. We know he feels this way as he says, ‘and will not go away’. Also there has been a role reverse as the son used to be the one following his father around the field and tripping and falling but now his father is following him around and keeps stumbling. There is a use of repetition as the narrator says he used to stumble along but now his father does instead.
The difference in the father in the second verse of ‘Strongman’ is that there is once again a role reverse. The father was extremely physically strong in the first verse and used to look after and play with his son but now in the second verse he has become old and weal and his son now has to look after him. There is still a close bond between them as the son is helping his father to do everything, even to ‘lift him to the lavatory’.
I prefer and find most moving ‘Strongman’. I find this more moving than ‘Follower’ because there is a close bond between father and son all the way through and they are both there for each other. Whereas in ‘Follower’ they started off close but ended up being rather annoyed at each other. I also find ‘Strongman’ more moving because of the way the narrator describes his father and the way that in the last few lines the son is reassuring and telling his father, ‘No trouble, no trouble, Dad’.