Hammer and Sickle Summary and Analysis

Hammer and Sickle Summary

At the start of "Hammer and Sickle," inmates are being shepherded by guards across a busy highway overpass to an athletics field where a prison soccer game will be played. The narrator walks alongside a tall inmate named Sylvan Telfair, whose criminal offense involved international finance. This interests the narrator, who introduces himself as Jerold and tries to strike up a conversation, but Telfair is uncommunicative. Jerold reflects that his life feels unreal here among the convicts, who bet on football or have other obsessions, such as Biblical studies or running. Back in prison after the game, Jerold watches a children's television program in which two young girls read the news, including the stock market report. The girls are Jerold's daughters, Laurie and Kate, who were selected, their mother tells him on the...