In Reapers, Jean Toomer talks about humans and how they can feel and care, they can make moral choices, but machines cant. It shows us this by setting two scenes next to each other: a scene of men working in a field and a scene of a mowing machine. In the first one, all the work is done by humans with their hands. Yes it does take more than one person to do the job buy by doing the work by hand lets more people have jobs and therefore and keeps a community going. The opening line of the poem tells us who the reapers are in just one word: “black.” This sets the tone for the poem. This tells us the reapers are most likely slaves. Toomer’s diction is very deliberate and effective. The use of the word “reaper” is a double entendre in that a reaper