To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not

First edition cover
Author	Ernest Hemingway
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Fiction
Publisher	Charles Scribner's Sons
Publication date	1937

To Have and Have Not is a novel by Ernest Hemingway (publ. 1937) about Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain out of Key West, Florida. The novel depicts Harry as an essentially good man, who is forced by dire economic forces beyond his control into the black-market activity of running contraband between Cuba and Florida. A wealthy fishing charter customer (one of the "Have's") tricks Harry by slipping away after a day's fishing without paying the money he owes him. Harry then makes a fateful decision to smuggle Chinese immigrants into Florida from Cuba to make ends meet in supporting his family. Harry begins to regularly ferry different types of illegal cargo between the two countries, including alcohol and Cuban revolutionaries. The Great Depression features prominently in the novel, forcing depravity and hunger on the poor residents of Key West (the "Have Not's") who are referred to locally as "Conchs."

To Have and Have Not was Hemingway's second novel set in the United States, after The Torrents of Spring. Written sporadically between 1935 and 1937, and revised as he traveled back and forth from Spain during the Spanish Civil War, To Have and Have Not portrays Key West and Cuba in the 1930s, and provides a social commentary on that time and place. Hemingway biographer, Jeffrey Meyers describes the novel as heavily influenced by the Marxist ideology Hemingway was exposed to by his support of the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War while he was writing it. The work got a mixed critical reception.

The novel had its origins in two short stories published earlier in periodicals by Hemingway ("One Trip Across" and "The Tradesman's Return") which make up the opening chapters, and a novella, written later, which makes up about two-thirds of the book. The narrative is told from multiple viewpoints, at different times, by different characters, and the characters' names are frequently supplied under the chapter headings to indicate who is narrating that chapter.