Figurative Language In Follower By Heaney And Waterhouse

Firstly, both Heaney and Waterhouse have used figurative language to animate how the young boy in each of their poems admires his father or grandfather. In ‘Follower’, Heaney starts off by comparing his father’s ‘globed’ shoulders to a ‘full sail strung’- across some sort of boat. Other sailing imagery is also used throughout the poem. For instance, ‘mapping the furrow exactly’ and ‘i stumbled in his hob-nailed wake’, where the poet’s father is juxtaposed with a sea captain and a boat, respectively. This indicates that the young boy looked up to his father, he saw him as a strong, large and powerful man. Similarly, in ‘Climbing My Grandfather’, an extended metaphor is used. The poet compares his grandfather to a mountain, which he