The main setting of the poem are the fields on which the speaker observes the titular reapers harvesting. The plentitude of the field contrasts the limitations placed on the reapers, how they internalize, accept “as a thing that’s done,” that their measure of value is based solely on how well they can meet the economic demands of the harvest (3). While scenes of harvest are frequently associated with plentitude and communities coming together to gather supplies from the earth that will serve the needs of all, the reapers are, instead, associated with a sense of exclusion and isolation – they “start their silent swinging, one by one” (4). The bounty and life-giving properties of the harvest ironically emphasize the situation of the reapers, who are dehumanized during the harvest work into no better than work animals, such as the “Black horses [that] drive a mower through the weeds...