Ish tries to throw away the hammer

Ish tries to throw away the hammer during a solitary walk after a funeral service has stirred his grief. The attempt turns into a quiet test of his attachment: he makes plans to discard the object, then catches himself inventing reasons not to do so. By the time he reaches the University campus, he has acknowledged that the hammer matters to him, even though he does not share the children’s explicit belief in its power. The scene makes visible a bond that has formed without his deliberate consent.

Grief and the Choice of a Companion

Em advises Ish to take a walk and spend some time by himself. The funeral has affected him deeply; unlike those who seek company in grief, he prefers solitude. He is not worried about Em, whom he considers stronger than himself, and leaves without lunch because he has no appetite. He assumes he can always stop at a store and choose canned food if he wants it. The details mark the walk as unplanned and solitary, not an expedition requiring provisions.

Although it is routine not to go far from the houses without a weapon, Ish does not put on his pistol-belt. At the last moment, he takes the hammer from the mantelpiece instead. This choice unsettles him: the hammer is not even his oldest possession, and the house contains things he remembers from boyhood, yet none has the same hold on his thoughts. He suspects the object’s importance comes from his association of it with surviving the first days after the disaster. That explanation does not settle the matter. He rejects the children’s apparent faith in the hammer, but wonders whether he, too, is becoming superstitious.

The Decision to Discard It

As Ish walks without caring which direction he takes, the hammer dangling from one hand becomes a nuisance. Irritation at its weight gives way to a more troubling recognition: what bothers him is not simply carrying it, but the possibility that it has become a fixation. He decides he will not let the object impose itself on his mind. He imagines walking to San Francisco Bay, going out along the old wharf, and hurling the hammer into the waves, where it would sink into the mud and be gone.

The resolve does not hold his attention. Joey’s memory floods back, and Ish thinks no more about the hammer for a time. When he emerges from his sorrow, he notices that he is still carrying it—and that he is walking south, not west toward the Bay. He first explains the change as practical: he is still weak, the Bay is a long way off, and a gully among the bushes would be an easier place to discard the object. The proposed shortcut exposes the conflict rather than solving it. Ish realizes he would remember where he had hidden the hammer and would not actually lose it that way.

Recognition and Change of Direction

Ish recognizes that his mind is trying to deceive him. He stops pretending that the problem is distance or convenience and admits that he does not want to be separated from the hammer. It has come to mean a great deal to him, though he cannot reduce that attachment to a single explanation. His admission distinguishes his own relation to the object from the children’s belief: he need not accept their account of the hammer’s power to feel its emotional weight himself.

He also understands why his feet have been taking him south. The broad street leads toward the University campus, which he has not visited for a long time. The grief remains, but it has become less overwhelming after his decision about the hammer. The episode does not show grief disappearing or the loss being resolved; instead, recognition of what he wants changes the immediate course of his walk and, in some way, alters the pressure of his sorrow.

The Hammer in the Changed Landscape

At the University campus, Ish’s attention returns to the visible changes wrought by the years. The section has suffered badly in an earthquake: a fissure crosses the old concrete pavement, and rain and running water have widened and deepened it into a gully. Trees and bushes now rise along the break across the broad street. The damaged pavement makes the altered landscape concrete, while Ish’s renewed interest in its transformation draws him away from grief without erasing it.

He swings the hammer to give himself momentum and jumps the four-foot gap from one edge of the pavement to the other. Pleased that his legs are not too weak despite his illness, he uses the object he had meant to abandon as part of an ordinary physical act. The ending does not present a formal change of mind about the hammer’s meaning; it shows the attempted rejection giving way to continued possession. Ish’s route, his failed excuses, and the hammer’s place in his hand together reveal an attachment he has chosen not to break.