Follower.

In the poem The Follower by Seamus Heaney, Heaney uses imagery to tell the story of his father and the memories he shares. The poem is about how his father, although he may not be by his side, the speaker still cares and cherishes his father's work.
We know that the speaker cherishes and admires his father because of the images that Heaney uses. The images we can see are that of the father himself. The father having shoulders that were "globed like a full sail strung". The simile used here help gives the reader an idea of how large and strong the speaker's father was.
Another example of the speaker talking of his father in admiration is when he calls his father "an expert" these words help show that the speaker saw that his father was probably the greatest farmer out there since he knew everything that there was to know, hence calling his father an expert. The speaker backs this up because of the description "His eye narrowed and angled at the ground, mapping the furrow exactly". Those lines help back up the fact that the speaker sees his father as an expert.
But when I look at the forth stanza, we can see that the speaker changes his tone of voice and we can see that he begins to write about the things he use to do that were bad. The speaker begins to talk of how he bugged his father, and what his father did for him.
We can say that the speaker and his father had a great relationship because of the fact that the father, although he worked the farm, he still took the time to let the speaker ride on his back.
In the poem, we know that the speaker's father did a lot for the child as he says that "all [he] ever did was follow in his [father's] broad shadow around the farm" we can say that the father would always be out there on the farm to help support his family.
And perhaps the speaker, throught the poem is trying to persade himself that his father did his best and that the speaker's father was the one who stood by him and that's why the speaker cannot leave or his father's memory cannot leave him.
We can say that the speaker admired his father's strength because the speaker says that he
"wanted to grow up and plough, to close one eye, stiffen [his] arm" these lines show the reader that perhaps he wanted to become as strong as his father yet never got to.
Overall, i believe that Heaney uses these images to reveal the strong relationship that the speaker and his father has. And the admiration that the speaker has for his father even when his father cannot do what his did b4 for his son, and the fact that he cannot be there for him anymore.