For Whom the Bell Tolls
The political anger sharpened into his greatest sustained work, written three years later.
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To Have and Have Not
Key West fishing captain, rum-runner, revolutionary — Hemingway's darkest argument about how poor men survive in the Depression.
- 1937
- 262
About Ernest Hemingway
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeHarry Morgan runs charter fishing out of Key West in the lean years, and when a client skips his fee and strands him in Havana, one decision tips him from fishing into rum-running into worse. Stitched from two short stories into a novel, it is the angriest thing Hemingway published — not his most elegant, but the anger is deliberate: a working man's tragedy about the impossibility of surviving outside the law when the law has nothing to offer. The famous dying line became a rallying cry; in context, it is desolate.
The story, in more detail
His only novel set on home soil grew out of the Depression, magazine by magazine: 'One Trip Across' in Cosmopolitan in 1934 and 'The Tradesman's Return' in Esquire in 1936 both starred Harry Morgan, a Key West charter captain squeezed into running contraband between Cuba and the Keys. In 1936 and 1937, with Spain already pulling at him, Hemingway stitched the stories together with new material into a novel about what a man alone can and cannot do.
It is his most political book almost by accident — written in his most political years, between fundraising for Loyalist Spain and filming The Spanish Earth, and it shows the strain: the 'haves' satire of the yacht basin sits oddly against Morgan's hard-luck chapters, and the reviews said so. He finished it in a hurry and knew it; Spain mattered more to him that year than revision did.
Hollywood gave it the strangest afterlife on his shelf: Howard Hawks bet Hemingway he could make a picture from his worst book, hired William Faulkner to help with the script, kept little but the title and the boat, and delivered Bogart, Bacall, and 'you know how to whistle' in 1944. The novel underneath is rougher company — but Morgan's hard-won discovery about what one man alone can do is the hinge on which Hemingway's next decade turned.
The full plot
Harry Morgan runs a charter fishing boat out of Key West in the worst of the Depression, and the book opens with the insult that sets his course: a rich client loses Harry's expensive tackle, runs up three weeks of charter fees, and skips out without paying a cent. With a wife and daughters to feed, Harry crosses the line he had stayed on the right side of — first agreeing to smuggle Chinese migrants out of Cuba, a job that ends with him killing the double-crossing fixer rather than drowning the men, then running liquor, a trade that costs him an arm and his boat.
The novel intercuts his descent with the 'haves' — the yacht-basin rich, the drunk tourists, a self-pitying novelist named Richard Gordon — whose troubles are shown in withering parallel to the Morgans'. Harry, one-armed and boatless, takes the last job available: ferrying four Cuban revolutionaries who have just robbed a bank, men he knows will not intend to leave witnesses.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
On the water, Harry Morgan does what he planned: he kills the four bank robbers with a hidden machine gun — but takes a bullet in the stomach in the exchange. The Coast Guard finds the drifting boat a day later, Harry barely alive among the dead. Dying, he delivers the sentence the whole novel has been building toward, the discovery that took him all of his life: that a man alone has no chance — no matter how strong, no matter how skilled. The book closes on his widow Marie, taking inventory of a future without him, in one of the era's bleakest final chapters.
Why we recommend it
The dying line, earned
'One man alone ain't got no bloody chance' — the sentence that defined a generation of labor writing. Read in context, after three hundred pages of Harry Morgan's incremental ruin, it is not a slogan but a verdict.
Key West as a real place
The bars, the docks, the Depression-era veterans in the camp outside of town — this is the only Hemingway novel set in the United States, and the America it depicts is not the one his other books were written from.
The unguarded anger
The novel is often dismissed as minor; it is actually Hemingway letting the seams show. The structural awkwardness is part of the record of a writer genuinely disturbed by what he was seeing.
What this book explores
Bring it to book club
- The novel's structure — three parts, three voices — is visibly seamed. Does that damage it or does it suit the subject?
- Harry Morgan is not sympathetic by conventional standards. How does Hemingway make you want him to survive anyway?
- The 'haves' of the title barely appear. What would the book look like if their sections were expanded?
Timeline
1934
"One Trip Across" appears in Cosmopolitan, introducing the Key West charter captain Harry Morgan.
1936
"The Tradesman's Return" follows in Esquire, and Hemingway stitches the two stories together with new material into a novel.
1937
Scribner publishes it, his angriest book and his only novel set on home soil, as Spain pulls at him.
1944
Howard Hawks films it with Bogart and Bacall, William Faulkner on the script, keeping little but the title and the boat.
Book editions
- Paperback
- Scribner
- 2003
- 9780684818986
Ebook
- Ebook
- Scribner
Audiobook
- Audiobook
Reader reviews
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Read our takeTo Have and Have Not: frequently asked questions
Who wrote To Have and Have Not?
Ernest Hemingway. It was published by Scribner in 1937.
What is To Have and Have Not about?
Harry Morgan runs charter fishing out of Key West in the lean Depression years; when a client skips his fee and strands him in Havana, one decision tips him from fishing into rum-running into worse.
Is it the only Hemingway novel set in the United States?
Yes. It is his only novel set on home soil, moving between Key West and the waters off Cuba.
Was it assembled from short stories?
Yes. Hemingway stitched two Harry Morgan stories — "One Trip Across" (1934) and "The Tradesman's Return" (1936) — together with new material into a novel.
Why is it called his most political novel?
Written during the Depression, between fundraising for Loyalist Spain and filming The Spanish Earth, it is the one time Hemingway engaged directly with class — the working man against the idle rich.