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Mark Cockcroft
Professor
American Studies
December 2014
Cultural Analysis Paper
Imagery in Jean Toomer’s “Reapers”
Jean Toomer's poem, "Reapers" (1923) contains many darkly powerful images, physically and metaphorically, based largely (although not entirely) on the poem’s repeated use of the word “black”, in reference to both men doing harvesting work in the fields, and the beasts of burden that help them. Within this poem, Jean 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 images, a sense of unceasing mechanical motions (i.e., motions 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 the poem has only one stanza, but also by Toomer’s deliberate and skillful imagery that melds human labor; mechanical movement; and death into one. In this essay, I will analyze how Jean Toomer’s
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imagery within “Reapers” contributes powerfully to this 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” From the outset, then, 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 this 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), then mechanically replacing the hones “In their hip-pockets…a thing that's done” (line 3), stops for nothing: rest; injury; or death. The poem begins with its main subjects, the “Black reapers” (line 1), i.e., the black men working in the fields, sometime either before or after the Civil War (the poem is not specific in this regard)—readying themselves for today’s work, with their first act of the day being “sharpening scythes” (line 2). Thus the poem begins with images of both sharpness and monotony, a juxtaposition of seemingly disparate images that nonetheless persists throughout “Reapers.” Next a mower pulled by black horses, indifferently slices cuts through “weeds and shade” (line 8), destroying a field rat in its midst. As the poem states, of this mechanical; unceasing, and unfeeling work: Black horses drive a mower through the weeds, And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, (lines 5-6). Moreover, it is as if the “black reapers” themselves, along with “Black horses [that] drive a mower through the weeds” (line 5) are indistinct from the mechanical reaping instruments: “scythes” (line 2) and “a mower” (line 5), that, having caught a field rat in its blades, continues “cutting weeds and shade” (line 8). Further, Toomer’s repeated references within the poem, to the color “black” (lines 1 and 5), as both a color and a metaphor, reinforce the fusion of men; machines, and horses. For example, within line 1 (“Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones”, it is unclear at first, before also reading the second line of the poem, whether the “Black reapers” are in fact men or machines. Moreover, the words “black reapers”, perhaps also suggest images of death (as in ‘Grim Reaper’), which is reinforced by a later line within the poem that describes the death of a field rat chopped up by the blades of a mower driven by “Black horses” (line 5). Within the poem, moreover, “black” represents both the color of death (e.g., “Black horses”), and also the ethnic race of those working methodically in the field. These “Black reapers”, having now sharpened their scythes and replaces the sharpening hones in their hip pockets; mechanically; “a thing that’s done” (line 3), begin working, silently, monotonously, as if they were, themselves, but machines. The reapers go about their work silently, mechanically, mindlessly – like the machines they use for cutting. In this way, the poem’s imagery also implicitly suggests that this parallels to way these men (and other blacks during the long, uncomfortable years after the Civil War, were treated: that is, in cases like the poem describes, not all that differently than before the abolition of slavery in the rural South. Furthermore, 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, also, the mechanical rhythms and meter of the way the poem is written, serve to underscore the equally mechanical, impersonal nature of the poem’s 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”) The monotonous, physically repetitive and mentally numbing nature of the field work Toomer describes is, as North further points out: “. . . relying . . . on a few movements reiterated again and again, and in a temporal sense, since it must be done every day, every season, season after season. It is a thing that's done, a habit” (“On “Reapers”). Further, as North states: As Toomer put it in a letter . . . "The supreme fact of mechanical civilization is that you become part of it, or get sloughed off (under)." The line describing the death of the field rat embodies this change . . . Instead of working slowly and rhythmically, the mower moves on ineluctably, even killing the living things before it, which make a sound that is the very antithesis of the soft silent swinging of the scythes. The dying squeal of the rat affects the poetry itself, which is least iambic and most interrupted just here, as if the line itself were cut mindlessly and inorganically. (“On “Reapers”) Jean Toomer himself was not black but multiracial (“Jean Toomer”; “Photographs of Jean Toomer”), and a leading figure of the early Harlem Renaissance. The “Reapers” first appeared in a longer work of his, called Cane, a fusion of poetry, prose, song, and various other forms (“Jean Toomer”). During the period of the Harlem Renaissance, which took place approximately during the decades between World War I and World War II, Harlem in New York became a Mecca for African American writers and other artists. Jean Toomer’s experimental novel Cane, like his poem “Reapers”, is rich in vivid and often stark poetic imagery (“Jean Toomer”). As Toomer stated, of his origins, Racially, I seem to have seven blood mixtures: French, Dutch, Welsh, Negro, German, Jewish, and Indian. One half of my family is definitely colored.... And, I alone, as far as I know, have striven for a spiritual fusion analogous to the fact of racial intermingling. (“Photographs of Jean Toomer”) In conclusion, in seeing himself described primarily as a black writer (rather than as merely an American writer, a designation he much preferred) during the Harlem Renaissance, Toomer felt (and resented being) pigeon-holed, since he also believed that that unfairly limited, and categorized him as a writer and a person (“Jean Toomer”). Within “Reapers” itself, similarly, Toomer underscores the constraining power, of images, such as those created by the word “black”. The poem “Reapers” is a powerful example of the ability of images made from words to both limit and delimit that which we imagine; perceive; and see.
Jean Toomer's family was not typical of migrating African Americans settling in the North, or fleeing the South. Each of his maternal grandparents were born of a caucasian father. But a "speck of Black makes you Black." Thus, Toomer's grandfather, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, was a free born black, a Union officer in the Civil War and was elected to the office of Lieutenant Governor and later Acting Governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction. The Pinchback's retired north and settled in the Negro community of the capitol. Thus, Toomer was born, as Nathan Pinchback Toomer into an upper class Negro family in Washington D.C. on December 26, 1894. Shortly after Toomer's birth, his caucasion father deserted his wife and son, and in 1996 Toomer's mother, Nina Toomer, gave him the name Nathan Eugene (which he later shortened to Jean). At the age of ten he was stricken with severe stomach ailments which he survived with a greatly altered life. He showed strength early - when faced with adversity, rather than wring his hands and retreat further into himself, Toomer searched for a plan of action, an intellectual scheme and method to cope with a personal crisis. Toomer writes in Wayward and Seeking, "I had an attitude towards myself that I was superior to wrong-doing and above criticism and reproach ... I seemed to induce, in the grownups, an attitude which made them keep their hands off me; keep, as it were, a respectable distance." Eugene and Nina and a new husband moved to New York in 1906; however, upon Nina's death in 1909, Nathan moved back to Washington and his grandparents.
Choosing the first person form in the first and fourth stanza, the poet reflects his personal experiences with the city of London. He adheres to a strict form of four stanzas with each four lines and an ABAB rhyme. The tone of the poem changes from a contemplative lyric quality in the first to a dramatic sharp finale in the last stanza. The tone in the first stanza is set by regular accents, iambic meter and long vowel sounds in the words "wander", "chartered", "flow" and "woe", producing a grave and somber mood.
The constant rhythm throughout the poem gives it a light beat, like a waltz; the reader feels like s/he is dancing. The rhyme pattern of...
...ration, onomatopoeia, rhyme etc. One of the sound types I will be looking at is Full or perfect rhyme. This sound type is significant as in Dulce Et Decorum Est at the end of each sentence rhymes with the one before the last. This is significant as when reading this poem you notice this rhyming scheme and take more time to stop and ponder over the significance of the language it is based around and what connotations that word has: “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” and “Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs”. This is one of the most effective rhyming schemes in the poem. Due to every second line rhyming this makes your remember what the poet was trying to put across in the previous lines as all the different lines have a way of tying in with one another.
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
Chaos and drudgery are common themes throughout the poem, displayed in its form; it is nearly iambic pentameter, but not every line fits the required pattern. This is significant because the poem’s imperfect formulation is Owen making a statement about formality, the poem breaks the typical form to show that everything is not functioning satisfactorily. The poem’s stanza’s also begin short, but become longer, like the speaker’s torment and his comrades movement away from the open fire. The rhyming scheme of ABABCDCD is one constant throughout the poem, but it serves to reinforce the nature of the cadence as the soldiers tread on. The war seems to drag on longer and longer for the speaker, and represents the prolonged suffering and agony of the soldier’s death that is described as the speaker dwells on this and is torn apart emotionally and distorts his impressions of what he experiences.
When I read examples of alliteration like spade sinks, gravelly ground, tall tops, buried the bright, squelch and slap of soggy and curt cuts I almost find myself, at times, reading quicker. The amount of imagery in this poem is immense. “When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down” I can almost see myself watching the spade dig into the ground while the speaker is digging into his writing. While reading this poem multiple times, I notice different types of rhymes. The first two stanzas consist of slant rhyming; thumb/gun, sound/ground/down. I think having the first five lines rhyme creates a rhythm. It is very noticeable; one could not read the opening lines with noticing the rhymes. This grabs the reader’s attention right away. The other type of rhyme’s Seamus uses is internal rhymes. Rhymes like knee/firmly; men/them. These, in my opinion, are like “sneaky” rhymes. They don’t slap you in the face and aren’t completely obvious, but It is a repetition of sound. I like how the author uses all these types of rhymes, it makes me stick along with the story. These sound effects seem to emphasize the detail the speaker is using to describe what he is daydreaming. It takes us through what he is seeing and what he is feeling, it’s an emotional
... syllable lines, which gives the effect of a balanced beat, or something one can dance to. Additionally, it seems that he uses the same verse at the beginning and at the end of the poem, in order to create a “frame” which is relative to the actual painting.
Assonance—the repetition of the same or similar vowel sound, especially in stressed syllables—can also enrich a poem. Assonance can be used to unify a poem as in Roberts' poem in which it emphasizes the thematic connection among words and unifies the poem’s ideas of the humanoid and nature. Roberts indirectly links certain words and by connecting these words, he calls attention to the imagery that helps communicate the poems theme of how different mother nature and humans can be. In addition to alliteration and assonance, poets create sound patterns with rhyme. The conventional way to describe a poem’s rhyme scheme is to chart rhyming words that appear at the ends of lines. Naturally, rhyme does not have to be subtle to enrich a poem. Rhyme can also be classified according to the position of the rhyming syllables in a line of verse. Poets, too, create rhyme by using repeated words and phrases. “The red flats are uncovered, mile on mile" (31). Meter, the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that govern a poem’s lines, largely creates poetic rhythm. This gives readers the “beat” of the poem and approximates the sound of spoken language. A way of varying meter is to introduce a pause in the rhythm often created by a caesura--a “cutting” within a line. Both Brooks and Bradstreet use caesuras to complete individual thought and to add to the beat of the poem.
William Shakespeare’s “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore” is an English sonnet about the nature of time, in which Shakespeare both follows and deviates from the traditional sonnet form. Reading the poem with this in mind gives the poem an additional dimension, bringing the reader to consider why this has been done, and how it impacts the poem’s meaning. Shakespeare has modeled the external structure of the poem to coincide with this message that time is a destructive force whose wrath is unavoidable, and this is evident upon examination of his use of a consistent rhyme scheme, his employment of occasional trochees and spondees, and his adherence to the structure of three quatrains and a couplet.
The poem is composed of seven stanzas each consisting of eight verses. The rhyme scheme is, “A – B – C – B – D – E – F – E”. In other words, the poem rhymes with every second and sixth verse. Thus, it has a traditional rhyme scheme. In each line, there are three iambs and the rhythm is, “u–u– u–“. Each verse consists of six syllables, which means that the same rhythm occurs throughout the whole poem. The rhythm is regular and it creates the sense of soldiers marching off to war.
There is no consistent rhyme scheme to the poem, and almost all the stanzas in the poem have run-on lines to the following stanza. The effect these create is a general atmosphere of inconsistency and disorder. The run-on lines also place an emphasis upon the last word of the stanza and the first word of the following, helping the poet impress upon the reader the significance of words such as “river”, “tongues”, “snakes”, “shapes” and “rules”. The atmosphere of inconsistency and disorder that is created can also be linked to the free, uncontrollable movement of the snakes.
of the poem’s design. His control of the poem in the light of rhyming is
While analyzing a poem, a reader notices many things, things like rhyme scheme, word choice, different levels of a poem, and sentence structure. Each one of these things is an ingredient for the four main components of the formalistic approach to poetry. In the poem "Ozymandius" by P.B. Shelley, structure, style, form, and imagery, allow the reader to look deeper into the poem.
Rhyme scheme follows quite a loose A, B, A, B pattern. The reason for the description of loose is that some lines end without true rhyme. For example, 'her fate' (l.2) then 'she sat' (l.4) does not follow the pattern which has been set out for most lines such as 'to bemoan' (l.1) and 'alone' (l.3). Furthermore, dialect may also interfere with pronunciation, especially with the end words of 'tongue' (l.6) and 'wrong' (l.8). This reoccurs later on with 'strove' (l.33) and 'love' (l.35) as well in other areas of the poem. However, seeming as this was composed in the 17th century, diction would have been different to that of the contemporary reader, meaning the form of the poem, in terms of reading aloud, may have had the correct rhyme intention.