How to Compare Follower and Walking Away: Sample Essay and GCSE Guide

There’s a particular moment most GCSE students recognise.

You understand both poems. You’ve annotated them. You know the quotes.

And then the exam question says: Compare.

Suddenly everything feels harder.

• Do you write about one poem first?
• What actually counts as comparison?
• And how do you move beyond spotting similarities into something that sounds thoughtful and perceptive?

If you’re comparing Follower by Seamus Heaney and Walking Away by Cecil Day-Lewis (both poems from the AQA Love and Relationships Anthology), the good news is that these poems almost want to be compared. They’re both reflective, memory-driven poems about fathers and sons. But crucially, they arrive at very different emotional conclusions.

And that difference is exactly where high marks live. Here’s how to get started.

Before You Even Start Writing: What Are These Poems Really About?

One of the biggest upgrades students can make is this:

• Don’t begin with techniques.
• Begin with meaning.

Ask yourself:

What is each poet saying about growing up, and about parents?

What’s the overall message of Walking Away and Follower?

In Walking Away, Day-Lewis remembers watching his son walk towards his first football match alone. On the surface, not much happens. But emotionally, everything changes. The poem becomes a reflection on one of the hardest parts of parenting: accepting that children must eventually move beyond you. By the end, the poet reaches a calm, almost philosophical conclusion. That “love is proved in the letting go.”

Heaney’s Follower, however, refuses that neat resolution. The speaker remembers idolising his father — powerful, skilled, completely competent — only for the relationship to reverse in adulthood. The father who once led now follows. And the poem ends not with wisdom, but discomfort.

So already, before analysing anything technical, we have a powerful comparison:

• Day-Lewis → love means release
• Heaney → love means ongoing responsibility

That insight alone gives you a strong comparative argument.

---

So… How Do You Structure a Poem Comparison in GCSE?

Here’s one of the most important things to understand for Grade 9 comparisons.

A strong GCSE poem comparison won’t feel like two mini essays stuck together. It feels like one conversation about two poems.

To achieve this, your structure should look something like this:

Introduction

Same, different, still same…

• Shared theme
• Key difference in ideas
• Clear overall argument

Comparative paragraphs
Each should paragraph explore:

• one shared idea
• one poet’s methods (this could include language or structure/form)
• direct comparison/contrast with the other poem
• what this reveals about meaning (using context to help you develop your points)

Conclusion

• Return to the big idea.
• What do both poems ultimately suggest about human relationships?

If you ever feel stuck, remember this simple rule:

Compare ideas first. Techniques come second.

The essay below shows what this structure could look like when everything works together — argument, comparison, context and detailed analysis.

Which elements will you borrow for your own writing?

Explore how both poets present father–son relationships in Follower and Walking Away (Sample Essay)

Both Seamus Heaney in Follower and Cecil Day-Lewis in Walking Away present father–son relationships through reflective adult memory. However, while Day-Lewis frames parental love as an act of necessary emotional release, Heaney presents filial connection as cyclical and psychologically unresolved. Through structural control, natural symbolism and shifting power dynamics, both poets explore how masculine identity and parental love evolve across time, revealing that growing up transforms — rather than ends — dependency.

Both poets employ natural imagery, yet their symbolic purposes sharply diverge. Influenced by Romantic writers such as William Wordsworth, Day-Lewis uses nature as a metaphorical framework for emotional development. Seasonal imagery in “a sunny day with leaves just turning” functions symbolically: the lexical field of transition reflects adolescence itself. The son becomes a “half-fledged thing”, with the hyphenated compound adjective emphasising incompletion, while the simile “like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem” draws upon organic reproductive imagery. The passive verb “loosened” subtly removes agency from both father and child, suggesting separation as a natural law rather than personal choice. This reflects Romantic philosophy in which human emotional experience mirrors inevitable natural cycles. Heaney’s natural imagery, by contrast, is grounded not in transcendence but labour. The father merges with agricultural machinery: his shoulders are “globed like a full sail strung”. The maritime simile magnifies physical strength while elevating manual work into epic achievement. Growing up in rural County Derry, Heaney frequently explored tensions between intellectual aspiration and inherited farming identity. Here, masculinity is defined through precision and skill. The verb sequence describing the father — “set,” “fit,” “turned,” “mapping” — forms a semantic field of mastery and control. In contrast, the child’s actions form a syndetic list: “tripping, falling, / Yapping always”. The conjunction implicit within the rhythmic listing prolongs failure, reinforcing the speaker’s childish dependence and admiration. Identity initially exists only in imitation: “All I ever did was follow.” Thus, while Day-Lewis presents independence as natural growth away from the parent, Heaney depicts childhood as lived entirely within the father’s gravitational influence.

Furthermore, despite their reflective tone, both poems subtly encode emotional pain through violent lexical choices. Day-Lewis’s simile “like a satellite / Wrenched from its orbit” introduces unexpectedly mechanical imagery into an otherwise organic poem. The dynamic verb “wrenched” conveys forceful rupture, exposing the emotional violence concealed beneath philosophical calm. Similarly, the metaphor “scorching ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay” combines elemental imagery of heat and creation. The biblical resonance of “clay” evokes humanity formed from earth, implying that suffering is necessary for the formation of identity itself. Even the verb “gnaws” suggests persistent psychological pain, undermining the poem’s apparent serenity. Acceptance is therefore hard-won rather than instinctive. Heaney’s emotional tension emerges through role reversal. Early physical instability — “I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake” — symbolises childish inferiority, yet the final stanza mirrors this imagery when the father becomes the one who “keeps stumbling.” This structural mirroring creates cyclical symmetry, suggesting that dependency inevitably transfers between generations. Importantly, the closing clause “and will not go away” carries tonal ambiguity. It may imply frustration or emotional burden, challenging sentimental portrayals of filial devotion. Heaney therefore presents love as ethically complex: affection persists alongside exhaustion and obligation.

Ultimately, the poets diverge in their conception of paternal love. Day-Lewis concludes with aphoristic certainty: “love is proved in the letting go.” The declarative syntax and abstract noun “love” elevate personal experience into moral principle. On the other hand, Heaney refuses such closure. Instead of disappearance, the father remains present, destabilising the comforting narrative of independence. Where Day-Lewis finds meaning through separation, Heaney reveals that familial bonds endure beyond autonomy, shaped by ageing, memory and guilt.

In conclusion, both poets present father–son relationships as evolving across time, yet their emotional trajectories differ profoundly. Day-Lewis, drawing on Romantic tradition and personal reflection, portrays separation as the ultimate confirmation of parental love. Heaney, rooted in rural inheritance and lived experience, exposes the enduring complexity of familial attachment, where admiration transforms into responsibility rather than release. Together, the poems suggest that growing up does not sever relationships but reshapes them, ensuring that love remains inseparable from dependence and change.

After Reading: What Else Could These Poems Compare With?

Once you understand why Walking Away and Follower work so well together, you’ll start spotting comparisons everywhere in the anthology.

What poem can you compare Walking Away to?

Because Walking Away explores parental love, independence and memory, it connects well with several anthology poems focused on family relationships:

• Eden Rock – memory, parents and emotional reunion across time
• Mother, Any Distance – separation and growing independence
• Before You Were Mine – parent–child identity and changing roles
• Climbing My Grandfather – admiration and familial legacy

All of these poems explore how relationships change as children grow older, making them strong comparative choices.

---

What poem does Follower compare to?

Follower pairs particularly well with similar parent-child poems that examine admiration, inheritance or shifting generational roles:

• Climbing My Grandfather – idealisation of an older male figure
• Mother, Any Distance – movement from dependence to independence
• Eden Rock – reflection on parents through adult memory
• Before You Were Mine – changing perspectives between generations

These comparisons let you explore how admiration often transforms into soemthing more complex: often responsibility, melancholy or emotional distance. Essentially, changing generational roles. An examiner favourite.

Final Thoughts: How to Compare Follower and Walking Away

If there’s one thing to take away for the family AQA Love and Relationships poems, it’s this: a top-grade comparison isn’t about remembering more quotes than everyone else.

It’s about showing you understand something simple but important:

Family relationships change, and poets write to make sense of that change.

Once you focus on ideas first, comparison becomes much more natural. And when comparison feels natural, high marks tend to follow.

What are your thoughts on these two poems? Let me know in the comments.