Follower Family Quotes

The first thing that comes to the speaker's mind in this memory is "my father." That's an indication that family is going to play an important role in the poem. Daddio will probably be particularly important.

We're really born in the wake of our parents, and we spend a lot of time trying to catch up to them. The speaker is no different, and luckily for him, he seems to really admire his father, so the prospect of following in the family footsteps is more enticing, even if it is a little intimidating. Heaney's having some fun with the sound of this line, using consonance: "stumbled" and "hob-nailed" with all those B and D sounds really give us the sense of the speaker bumbling around—it's not as smooth sounding as the S sounds in the first stanza that describes the father's work.

How sweet. The father seems to recognize his son's attention, so even though he's in the middle of work and giving his kid a piggyback ride probably doesn't make things any more productive, he gives him some much-craved attention.

Again, the boy wants to follow in his father's footsteps. For him, unlike some children, he doesn't want to break away from his father's path, but become more involved with it.

Heaney repeats the word "stumbling," but this time applies it to his dad. This is just how family works. At some point, we grow up and don't need the care and attention of our parents as much as we did as children. But our parents, because they're getting old, now need our care and attention. It's the circle of life, Shmoopers (The Lion King was really chock-full of life lessons, wasn't it?).