Imagery in Jean Toomer's "Reapers": Monotony and Death

Introduction: Darkness and Repetition in 'Reapers'

Jean Toomer's poem Reapers (1923) contains many darkly powerful images, both physical and metaphorical, based largely — though not entirely — on the poem's repeated use of the word "black." This word appears in reference to both the men doing harvesting work in the fields and the beasts of burden that help them. Within this poem, Toomer effectively employs repetitions of key words, phrases, and ideas, thus evoking within the reader feelings of both monotony and starkness as the "Reapers" of the title go about their work.

Toomer also creates, through the poem's imagery, a sense of unceasing mechanical motion — by human beings as well as by the sharp harvesting machinery itself — and equally mechanical, unfeeling scenes of death, such as when a field rat is chopped up by a mower drawn by black horses. The rhythmic, monotonous feeling of the poem is strongly reinforced not only by the fact that it consists of only one stanza, but also by Toomer's deliberate and skillful imagery, which melds human labor, mechanical movement, and death into one. This essay analyzes how Jean Toomer's imagery within Reapers contributes powerfully to the poem's overall effect.

The poem Reapers (1923) reads as follows:

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade. (Toomer, p. 797)

The Poem and Its Central Images

From the outset, Toomer's Reapers offers vivid imagery of black men ("Black reapers," line 1) — apparently either slaves or sharecroppers in the rural American South — and "Black horses" (line 5), going about the rhythmic, methodical business of reaping a harvest in a field. According to Gibbons: "The title, 'Reapers,' conveys the image of a group harvesting a field with scythes. The title can also convey thoughts of death, as our culture readily recognizes the name 'Grim Reaper' to be the cloaked figure of death. Both the literal reaping men, and the theme of death are found in the poem" ("Studying Sounds of Scythes").

Further, Toomer's imagery within the poem creates a vivid impression that the labor of these men, horses, and reaping machines is brisk, mechanical, unceasing, and at times brutal. Most powerfully, perhaps, the work of reaping the harvest — once begun, after "sharpening scythes" (line 2) and mechanically replacing the hones "In their hip-pockets ... a thing that's done" (line 3) — stops for nothing: not rest, not injury, not death.

The poem begins with its main subjects, the "Black reapers" (line 1), readying themselves for the day's work. Their first act is "sharpening scythes" (line 2). Thus the poem begins with images of both sharpness and monotony — a juxtaposition of seemingly disparate qualities that nonetheless persists throughout Reapers. Next, a mower pulled by black horses indifferently cuts through "weeds and shade" (line 8), destroying a field rat in its path:

Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds. (lines 5–6)

Fusion of Men, Machines, and Horses

It is as if the "black reapers" themselves, along with the "Black horses [that] drive a mower through the weeds" (line 5), are indistinct from the mechanical reaping instruments — the "scythes" (line 2) and "a mower" (line 5) — that, having caught a field rat in their blades, continue "cutting weeds and shade" (line 8). Toomer's repeated references to the color "black" (lines 1 and 5), used as both a color and a metaphor, reinforce this fusion of men, machines, and horses.

Within line 1 ("Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones"), it is unclear at first — before reading the second line — whether the "Black reapers" are men or machines. Moreover, the phrase "black reapers" perhaps also suggests images of death (as in "Grim Reaper"), which is reinforced by the later description of the field rat chopped up by the blades of a mower driven by "Black horses" (line 5). Within the poem, "black" thus represents both the color of death and the ethnic identity of those working methodically in the field.

These "Black reapers," having sharpened their scythes and replaced the hones in their hip pockets — "a thing that's done" (line 3) — begin working silently and monotonously, as if they were themselves machines. They go about their labor silently, mechanically, mindlessly, like the cutting tools they wield. In this way, the poem's imagery implicitly suggests a parallel to the way these men, and other Black Americans during the long, uncomfortable years after the Civil War, were treated: not all that differently, in cases like those the poem describes, from the conditions of slavery in the rural South.

As McKay notes, "Toomer creates a contrast between the knowledge and purpose of responsible human beings and the automated disinterestedness of machines. The reapers are deliberate in their preparations, and they have an objective and expectations of rewards. But no human awareness governs the actions of machines, which cannot comprehend the devastation they cause. In establishing this division, Toomer indicts those who carry out acts of oppression against others and asserts that they act out of elements in themselves that are less than human. Such actions violate the human reason for being, and the doer becomes like the machine, without the ability to nourish human life" ("On 'Reapers'").

As North observes, the mechanical rhythms and meter of the poem serve to underscore the equally mechanical, impersonal nature of its human and animal figures, and the manipulated movements of harvesting machinery and inanimate objects: "Reapers is written in rhymed quatrains, rhymed so insistently, in fact, that it is possible to read the poem as having only two rhyming sounds for its eight lines. It is also rendered in complete, conventional sentences, and it has a fairly consistent iambic rhythm. The rhythmic repetitions of the form stand for the repetitive nature of the work, which appears most obviously in the nearly perfect iambic line that represents the resumed swinging of the scythes" ("On 'Reapers'").

Conclusion

North, Michael. In "On 'Reapers.'" Modern American Poetry. Retrieved October 20, 2005, from: <

"Photographs of Jean Toomer." The Jean Toomer Pages. Retrieved October 20, 2004, from: <

Toomer, Jean. "Reapers." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 9th ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia (Eds.). New York: Longman, 2003.