Professor Avery Wright Hammer Character Analysis

The narrator’s former professor and Claude’s college roommate. At Claude’s urging on the narrator’s behalf, Professor Hammer secured a scholarship for the narrator at Occidental College and became his “most important teacher after Claude and Man.” Professor Hammer guided the narrator in American Studies and supervised his senior thesis on Graham Greene, despite the subject being outside of his field. Professor Hammer agrees to be the narrator’s sponsor, helping him get out of the refugee camp in San Diego. He gets the narrator a clerical job in the Department of Oriental Studies at Occidental. He also takes up a collection, on the narrator’s behalf, among the narrator’s former teachers. Professor Hammer is a gay man who has a boyfriend named Stan. Claude first mentions the professor’s homosexuality to the narrator in 1963 because he doesn’t want him to be surprised. He lives in a Craftsman bungalow in Pasadena and owns an extensive jazz collection. When he was young, he was a Communist.