The Hand

“The Hand” opens by plunging the reader into a classroom that is meant to evoke the reader’s own school experiences. The poem underscores this deep connection to its reader through its second-person perspective, in which a narrator calls the poem’s main character you, ascribed their identity to the reader. Ruefle’s use of this technique immerses the reader into the world of the poem.

The poem opens with an unnamed teacher, who “asks a question” (Line 1). The poem immediately clarifies how unimportant this question—and by extension the class subject and the teacher—is to you, the student, because what exactly that question is goes unsaid. Since “You know the answer” (Line 2) already, you are not learning anything new in class. Moreover, you, the student, realize that no one else is at your level: “you suspect / you are the only one in the classroom / who knows the answer” (Lines 2-4). Possibly, you don’t simply know the answer to the teacher’s question, but rather something grander. Because of this profound understanding, you see the question as a very personal one: “The person / in question is yourself” (Lines 4-5), turning the seemingly mundane, rote learning into a private, personal contemplation on which “you are the greatest living authority” (Line 6). This fact is an affirmation: nobody knows this student better than they do.

Still, despite knowing the answer, the student does not engage: “You don’t raise your hand” (Line 7), instead playfully transferring the motion of raising onto something else—“You raise the top of your desk” (Line 8). This repetition emphasizes the level of control you, the student, demand over the available choices. Inside the desk is “an apple” (Line 9)—a particularly meaningful object, as it alludes to the fruit from the biblical tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament of the Bible. Though God forbids Adam and Eve from eating this fruit, Eve gives in to temptation and Adam follows suit—disobedience that results in symbolic loss of innocence and expulsion from Paradise. In visual representations of the story, the fruit is most often depicted as an apple. This reference contrasts the secret, inner knowledge (or perhaps some grand universal truth) that you, the student, have with the boring lesson the teacher is giving.

The student disengages from the teacher and the classroom, as the poem insists through repetition: “You look out the window. / You don’t raise your hand” (Lines 10-11). This drives home for the reader the intention with which you are making this choice. The hand that could be a tool for participating correctly in class instead grasps an apple or simply stays still on the desk. Rather than directing attention to the teacher, you, the student, engage in self-directed study, minutely observing “some essential beauty in your fingers” (Lines 11-12). The hand is a fascinating body part: it can make things, move, or be still. Hands symbolize purpose, humanity, and connection—or rejection of that connection. Under this knowledge-seeking scrutiny, the fingers “aren’t even drumming, but lie / flat and peaceful” (Lines 13-14). They are almost in a meditative state—as if they are in their own world. However, the student can’t help but defensively react to a possible admonition, as the words “aren’t even drumming” sound like childlike indignation in response to being told to put hands elsewhere.

The student has completely disconnected from the class. When “The teacher repeats the question” (Line 15), the student does not react at all. The student’s calm, quiet, near-meditative state cannot be shaken.

Ruefle closes the poem with a stark, clean image of what you, the student, see out the window: “on an overhanging branch, / a robin is ruffling its feathers / and spring is in the air” (Lines 16-18). Robins are considered harbingers of spring because their nesting season falls in March, making them most visible and active during that time. Here, the robin symbolizes renewal and the thaw that follows winter—a loosening of strictures and the freedom of new growth.