Terminus

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Boundaries, Borders, and Liminal Space

As the god of boundaries, Terminus plays a crucial role in this poem. Tearmann in Irish is a direct linguistic descendent of Terminus. As Heaney notes in his book of essays Finders Keepers: “Terminus appears as tearmann in many Irish place-names, meaning the glebe land belonging to an abbey or a church, land that was specially marked off for ecclesiastical use” (Heaney, “Something to Write Home About”). In the Irish language, this parish boundary is a place of sanctuary and rest. Boundaries work on a smaller scale and denote the outer edge of a smaller piece of land like a yard, a farm, or a town.

“Terminus” argues that people from Northern Ireland live between these boundaries in everyday life: what can be crossed and what must be left alone. When Heaney writes about having “second thoughts,” he examines how the truth changes from one context to another: “Second thoughts are an acknowledgment that truth is bounded by different tearmanns, that it has to take cognizance of opposing claims” (Heaney, “Something to Write Home About”). As mentioned in the literary analysis, second thoughts are Heaney’s method of code-switching or alternating between two languages or dialects to better fit into the place where you currently live.

When boundaries between pieces of land become too large to maintain, they become borders. A border is a hard dividing line for larger areas like a county or a country. The name of this poem addresses the tensions that language and place can contain: crossing a border from one place to another may mean safety, but it can be dangerous depending on the context. People cross borders to leave a place and cross borders to come home; borders unite and divide groups of people. In Northern Ireland today, a soft border means better trade with other countries and thus peaceful cooperation. A hard border limits trade and free movement of people between nations, so it may cause additional tension.

In “Terminus,” Heaney argues for inhabiting the liminal spaces that exist in between rigid boundaries. Liminality derives from the Latin word for threshold. It marks an ambiguous space between one place and another. Wherever there is a border or boundary, there is a liminal space around it. These neutral spaces are where negotiation can exist between two hostile factions. It is where neighbors from different backgrounds can come to try to understand each other.

People can also be in a liminal space when moving from one part of their life to another, from childhood to adulthood. This poem is set at a liminal time in the author’s life before he left his life of farming for a boarding school at the age of 12. Children who grow up between cultures live in a liminal space where their parents’ identities meet. In this context, Heaney grew up with his father’s farming tradition and his mother’s connections to the local mill. He chose a different path for himself—neither farming nor an industrial trade—by becoming a writer.

Family Connections and Identity

Because Heaney wrote “Terminus” just after his mother died in 1984, the poem carries a heavy theme of forming a personal identity. It examines how family identity both balances out and shapes our individual place in the world. After his father passed away, the updated version published in 1987 notes the tension in this balance: “I was the march drain and the march drain’s banks / Suffering the limit of each” (Lines 13-14). Heaney tolerated the positive influence, the differences, and the limitations of both parents. These factors helped him to form his worldview and move deftly amid cultures.

In Finders Keepers, Heaney explains his birthplace: “I grew up between the predominantly Protestant and loyalist village of Castledawson and the generally Catholic and nationalist district of Bellaghy” (Heaney, “Something to Write Home About”). Loyalists in Northern Ireland have a predominately English and Scottish identity. As such, they want to keep Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. Nationalists want to see Northern Ireland united with the Republic of Ireland and usually have Irish ancestry.

Of his ancestry, Heaney writes: “On one side of me was the village of Castledawson where my mother’s people lived […] My grandparent’s house in Castledawson could have been in any spick-and-span English mill village” (Heaney, “Something to Write Home About”). His mother’s side of the family contained more English and Scottish ancestry. Meanwhile, his father’s family lived on the other side of the river Moyola:

there was the parish of Bellaghy or Ballyscullion, where my father’s family, the Heaneys and the Scullions, had lived for generations. Their dwellings were thatched rather than slated, their kitchens had fires rather than polished stoves […] the people who lived in them listened to the cattle roaring rather than the horn blowing [in the mill] (Heaney, “Something to Write Home About”).

His father’s family was traditionally Irish, continued its farming traditions, and was generally less affluent because of financial inequality.

This conflicting ancestry is what Heaney means in “Terminus” when he says: “I grew up in between” (Line 16). He moved between these two places, the two families, and all the traditions they carried with them to pass on to the next generation.

Connection with the Environment Versus Industrialization

To Heaney, rural life is a natural one. Growing up on a farm, tending cattle, and working the fields with his father shaped Heaney’s writing. His access to the forests and open fields instilled a Romantic fascination with wildlife and what lies beneath the ground he tilled. Iconic poems like “Death of a Naturalist” (1966) explore this connection to the natural world. Heaney’s fascination with archaeology and what lies beneath the ground is covered in depth in his bog people poems, like “The Grauballe Man” (1975).

Yet Heaney grew up in a country with a robust industrial core: shipbuilders in Belfast, for instance, built the Titanic, and Northern Ireland makes much of the world’s linen. (Because of its productive shipyards, Belfast was an early target in WWII.) Heaney engages with industrialization by balancing it with the natural world. His poems view industry as part of modernization. In the bog poems, Heaney offers an ecocritical critique of disrupting the landscape: Disturbing the ground can be productive, but it can expose unpleasant truths. Peat farming in Northern Ireland provides heat and a pleasant smell to the home. However, burning peat releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Boglands are also delicate wetland ecosystems that take thousands of years to restore properly. Bodies of people “disappeared” by the Troubles could also end up in a bog, thus tying the past to the present.

On the other hand, modernization allowed Heaney to live between places. He would have struggled to maintain a home between two continents without cars, trains, and airplanes. He relied on both the modern industrial world and his knowledge of the natural world to balance his life.