Jayne Anne Phillips raises questions about the legitimacy of foreign occupation in Korea as a result of the political and cultural monopolisation of a deeply divided country. Its contemporary relevance should therefore be noted, since to this day Korea is influenced by the designs of political rulers who forever changed the face of its historical and political identity. As a result, the story begins against a backdrop of societal unrest and uncertainty at the start of the Korean War, July 1950.

In 1950, Corporal Robert Leavitt is a soldier serving in the 24th Infantry division of the North Cungchong Province South Korea, where he eventually resides with Korean refugees in an abandoned railway tunnel as he recovers from injuries sustained in War. The story proceeds to jump back and forth in time to focus on two distinct moments which, though separated in location occur simultaneously exactly nine years ahead or behind the present day. As a result, another story is being told in the small town of Winfield, West Virginia where Lark, Termite and Nonie tell their stories as Leavitt’s closest surviving relatives, in July 1959.

In Lark and Termite, Phillips discusses issues relating to personal destiny and the transcendental association between shared minds and purposes and offers an interesting critique about the existential relationship between man and nature. As a consequence, Phillips is able to deliver a powerful and evocative message through four central characters whose close familial bond is described between shifting narrative perspectives of past and present, to illustrate the endurance of close, personal relationships which permeate and surpass the boundaries of place and time.

In 1959, Lark regularly takes Termite to a dis-used local railway tunnel which is used as a playground for the local children and described as a favourite place to visit. The objectification of the railway tunnel is therefore used as the connecting link to the past which allows for an exchange and meeting of minds to occur, most noticeably between the characters, Leavitt and Termite. As Lark explains:

The tunnel is dark as dusk inside, and humming. I didn’t use to hear it but I’ve learnt to. It’s more of a vibration than a sound. Like a remnant the train leaves in the stones.

This ‘remnant’ is seen as a memory of a former life which is trying to make contact with the children that Lark appears dimly aware of, since the tunnel offers a glimpse into the world Termite lives in daily.

The presence of the tunnel throughout the story then becomes the binding link between Corporal Leavitt and Termite, separated in time nine years into the future yet joined together in a moment of synchronism between two minds at his approach towards death. This takes Leavitt into a world inhabited by Termite; a child brain damaged at birth.

The continuous shadow of the figure who lingers at the door- or perhaps tunnel of death, provides a fascinating reflection into the sense guided world Termite exists in, with Leavitt’s final moments described as a life of temporality. In it we notice Leavitt’s feelings of partiality whilst moving between two separate worlds; on the one hand semi-alive yet faintly aware of his surroundings and the other amid moments of spiritual transcendence. This is understood through Leavitt’s remaining senses of sight and sound which act to create the defining features of a constrictive, mental sphere.

In the present day, Termite also appears as the partial re-embodiment of a lame, blind boy of similar age whom Leavitt meets near the time of his death in the tunnel. As Corporal Leavitt surmises, the unnamed boy may have been shunned by the local villagers who probably referred to him as a kind of ‘shaman figure’, a male witch with special abilities unknown to ordinary people.

As he explains when referring to the boy, ‘He’s calm, intensely present’ This similarly describes Termite’s contentment towards life and his separateness to ordinary people is emphasized through a shared natural ability of finding pleasure in the minutiae events of thoughts and feelings in everyday life. This translates as a paralleled connection between the two boys, at the same time as signaling a shared destiny between a man, and a boy living in the future through the bond which connects them both beyond time. This notion of transference between connected characters from the past and the present day therefore plays heavily upon the narrative viewpoint throughout the story.

During Leavitt’s experiences in a prolonged and confusing state of mind, partial conversations are digested and used to describe what appear as shifts into and out of consciousness:

The images are vivid and acute, a sensory expansion or avoidance. It doesn’t feel aimless; it feels like information, direction cut adrift from space or time…Leavitt can’t move, he’s only here, drifting behind his eyes. He tries to listen intently, sense fragments of information as the boy might sense or apprehend them.

This strong connection between Leavitt and Termite is again reflected in the stream of consciousness style to Phillips’ narration of Termite which is used to describe an understanding of everyday events taking on a life force of their own, to make up stories that in turn produce an alternative narrative to what is happening around him.

Termite relies on sight and sound to sustain a close relationship with nature by allowing nature’s voice to speak deep within him to explore hidden desires and incomprehensible passions. This again sets him apart as a character that exists beyond the realm of others to ascend a complex spiritual plane which only he can find and through which brings about a feeling of liberation through nature’s omnipotence and force:

The roar of the water is a train pouring through the dark and the picture inside him opens whole…He closes his eyes and the river opens up inside him. The river and the tunnel darken around him and he feels the river roll, deep and thick, folding like drenched fabric.

Nonie, who is an aunt to the two siblings explains that ‘Lark is the dark and the light shades between and the names for those are not what he (Termite) considers’.  In other words, Lark helps Termite to see what he cannot make sense of, by attempting to draw him into a state of consciousness to help him establish a link with the outside world which is further away from a transgressive reliance or spiritual elevation from reality.

Lark’s rejection of the past however, helps her to escape her mother’s past failures and lack of responsibility towards others. This is reflected in Lark’s unmoving determination to be a diligent and professional carer to Termite. As Lark explains, ‘Life feels big to me but I’m not sure it’s long’. This also evokes an optimistic understanding about the future through the enjoyment of each present moment which helps her to create a more fulfilling life for herself and her brother, through a lack of reliance on the past to define the future. This is in sharp contrast to Termite, who symbolises a withdrawal into the past through his exclusion from a thinking, conscious existence.

Likewise, Leavitt shares a similar understanding to Lark about the past as having the power to dictate future destiny but this time amidst a whole nation of people who appear entrapped by nature. This is viewed as both a physical and a symbolic entrapment which personifies the rulers of mankind through the dominating prospect of nature’s forceful rule:

The land is oppressive, ancient, dominant, cultivated in small patches, borrowed for scant lifetimes of subsistence farming. Lifetimes on the move now, blinks of an eye…

This allows Phillips to comment on the cyclicity and predictability of human nature, with generation after generation of peoples re-living the lives of ancestors through an expression of helplessness over their individual sense of destiny. This idea is supported by Lark and Termite, whose reliance on the past to a greater or lesser extent, helps to determine the unique course of their own lives and therefore affects their ability to embrace, or flee from its impact upon their future.

Again Phillips uses Leavitt’s perception of nature to describe its strong and god-like influence over the livelihoods of its inferior and powerless citizens. What is striking however, is that ‘none of it matters’, perhaps because people are not aware of being exploited by a higher power, but also because oppressive political leaders will often have their own way without regard for the mess and destruction their actions inevitably bring. This necessarily occurs most noticeably when a nation of people are dislocated and weakened through a lack of individual and collective power:

Whole villages emptied and moving, frightened populations, imported armies none of it matters. Generations of political animosity and serial foreign occupation are passing weather, and the hulking mountains watch. NKPA controls those mountains, that sky.

Here Phillips reaches the heart of the story’s politics, which criticises the oppressive political regimes of colonialism in war ravaged nations which rely on man’s lack of awareness or strength of leadership to overturn the rule of despotic law. Perhaps then, she uses the cyclicity of human nature and the inter-twining lives of various characters to warn of the dangers nations fall into when failing to challenge the accepted norms and values of the past to dictate future cultural and personal identity.

This in turn reinforces the rights powerful nations employ to overthrow inferior countries in the name of progress whilst bringing about a universal and global governance of the elite, because if people are not provided the opportunity to defend personal freedoms they necessarily become subjected to the powers that be.

This takes us again to the title of the book’s theme: Lark and Termite, which explains that life is often governed by the light and dark shades of mankind with the ‘Lark’ representing the dawning of a new day looking towards the future and ‘Termite’ acting as the rot and decay of past failures and defeats living in the past. However, both elements often subtly work together to counterbalance how life must be perceived. This is probably because the issues of life are not often straight forward and therefore require varying quantities of light and darkness to clarify and define the past to help make sense of the the present, whilst leading the way forwards to a better understanding and hope for the future.