The year was 1937 when Ernest Hemingway gave us the story of a fishing boat captain named Harry Morgan. Having To Have and Have Not pit the ‘have nots’ of Key West, Florida against the wealthy ‘haves’ in Havana, Cuba gives rise to an escalating tale against making an honest living with ever increasing criminality, risk and depravity.
Based in part on the Hemingway written short stories One Trip Across and The Tradesman’s Return, To Have and Have Not is densely packed with commentary of Cuban politics, experimentation of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt United States presidency through the Great Depression, and a sympathy for Marxism from Hemingway that the writer likely picked up while taking sides in the Spanish Civil War.
That commentary, launched in To Have and Have Not after a three-week fishing trip left Harry Morgan destitute in Havana, Morgan took to criminality of an appalling kind to keep his family afloat, metaphorically. The costs this had between Morgan and his wife, Morgan and those who supported his enterprise, and the direct victims his crimes had gave the multiple points of view this story was shared through depth. The underlying racist language and actions towards many ethnic groups, shown through the raw language, behavior against, and behavior by those groups surprisingly mingles into a distinctly Hemingway brand of maleness coupled with conflicting views of female and male relationships. Views of those using contraband or others fighting at the smallest triggers for sport extends this concept further.
From the point of the book’s release, I can sympathize with there being a sense of unevenness in the storytelling for To Have and Have Not. The commentary was brutal in the distrust of class on a wealth and political perspective, in addition to the deal that was being offered to those categorically being harmed by a system that didn’t seem to care. That the work gave the public a popular, action-driven perspective additionally gave the work an appeal that belied the commentary. For doing these things at seeming cross purposes, I give To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway 4.25-stars on a scale of one-to-five.
Matt – Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Matt Lynn Digital 