a charter fishing boat based in Key West, Florida. He is a big, powerfully built, athletic man in his early forties, ruggedly handsome and scarred by a life of adventure, which has made him even more attractive to women, an attraction enhanced by his indifference to its effect. He knows and loves the sea but has been forced to work as a guide for rich and ignorant tourists. When times are hard, he runs liquor on the Caribbean. Although he is scrupulously honest in his dealings with people, he is worried about his responsibilities to his wife and children. Under the pressures of corrupt and immoral local officials, he moves beyond the law into a series of dangerous and illegal voyages that eventually lead to his death. He tries to be decent and honorable according to his own set of principles, but he is overmatched by evil men and an inclination toward violence that finally goes beyond his control. Even during scenes in the novel in which he is not actively present, his daunting individuality hovers around the other characters as a measure of their courage, wit, and fundamental decency.

Marie Morgan

Marie Morgan, Harry’s wife and the mother of his three daughters, formerly a call girl. She is a big and handsome woman, with bleached blonde hair, still attractive in her mid-forties in a Rubenesque fashion but on the verge of losing her edge and sliding toward excess. She is deeply in love with her husband, strongly attracted to him physically and very dependent on him. Although she has the strength to survive on her own, she has committed her life completely to him and, to a lesser extent, to their children.

Albert Tracy

Albert Tracy, Morgan’s right-hand man and first mate. Tracy is roughly middle-aged, nondescript in appearance, not particularly intelligent, not especially strong, and not at all imaginative. He lives on welfare much of the time and tries to keep his complaining wife moderately satisfied. Morgan likes and trusts him because he is reliable, faithful, loyal, and competent at his job: “dumb but straight and a good man in a boat,” Morgan says. He tends to be cautious and has no real driving force in his life, but he shows the kind of courage Morgan values. He dies absurdly, sticking close to Morgan on his last ride.

Eddy

Eddy, a “rummy” who sometimes works for Morgan. He has lost the courage to act decisively except when fortified by alcohol. Morgan understands him and sympathizes to an extent with his fears, but Morgan is ultimately disgusted with him and regards him as a failure who does not have the character to face death and danger with some degree of grace. His walk, which is described as “sloppy” with “his joints all slung wrong,” typifies his lack of control and his absence of style.

Richard Gordon

Richard Gordon, a successful novelist, still youthful in the manner of a man who can afford the best clothing and care and the privileged existence of a celebrity. He is not a bad writer, but he has sacrificed a part of his soul to maintain his carefree pattern of living. He and his wife have no children, no permanent residence, and many affairs. Whereas Morgan knows who he is and what he must do to protect his honor, Gordon has no clear conception of himself and is disturbed by his uncertainty about how to act in a crisis. His writing is slick but superficial, contrived to exploit commercial opportunities, and he is no real judge of character, a crucial prerequisite for a real artist. When his wife leaves him for a less flashy but more substantial man, he is thrown into a kind of chaos he cannot resolve.

Helen Gordon

Helen Gordon, his wife, an extremely attractive woman in her early thirties, with dark hair, clear skin, and a need for something beyond the frivolous existence that they have been leading. She is instinctively aware of some deeper aspects of her character that have been suppressed and is willing to give up the brittle pleasures they share to find something of more enduring value. She and her husband form a kind of parallel to the Morgans, a pair of “haves” in contrast to the Morgans, who are “have nots” in the economic sense. The separation may drive both Helen and her husband into closer contact with the exigencies of life that have shaped Morgan and his wife.

Freddy

Freddy, a saloon keeper, a friend of Morgan, who appreciates his special character and tries to treat everyone with a degree of honesty and respect. He is one among several minor characters who appear on the streets, wharves, and bars of Key West who are not motivated by selfishness or the pleasures of power and control. He speaks Spanish and English, is worldly and experienced, is basically nonjudgmental, and appears likable in an ordinary way. He is another of the “have nots” who actually has a genuine sense of value and worth.

Wallace Johnston

Wallace Johnston, the owner of a yacht, with a master’s degree from Harvard and money from silk mills. At the age of thirty-eight, he is the epitome of the kind of “have” who is essentially harmless but who lacks any kind of insight, knows nothing of life beyond the club, and in his idle ignorance contributes to the economic conditions of the Depression, which have forced men such as Morgan over the line.

While Hemingway may have aimed to portray his protagonist as a unique individual, Harry Morgan is essentially a representation of a rogue individualist with the Gulf as his final frontier. "Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet," Harry retorts to a veiled threat on just the third page of the book. He comes across more like a hard-boiled detective than a fishing boat captain. Consequently, Harry Morgan behaves like a character from a Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler novel. Harry hires himself out for a fixed daily rate plus expenses, speaks in a wry, tough manner, and takes the law into his own hands by killing unsavory characters, such as Mr. Sing or the four trigger-happy bank robbers. He still carries a gun and is as quick with it as he is with his fists or his wisecracks. Even in terms of physical appearance, he resembles Sam Spade: tall, muscular, and rugged. Women are drawn to him, possibly because he exudes a pirate-like aura. This is no coincidence, as Harry's namesake was a famous buccaneer who terrorized the Caribbean before being knighted. Another real-life inspiration might have been Joe Russell, a Key West boat captain who smuggled rum during prohibition. On the literary side, there's also Hemingway's anonymous hero from the 1932 short story "After the Storm," another tough-minded and hard-fisted Key West boat captain.

Despite the similarities, there are notable differences between the tough-guy detective of pulp fiction and Hemingway's protagonist. For one, Harry is happily married to Marie, a large, heavyset, bleached-blonde ex-prostitute with whom he has three daughters. He is also utterly ruthless, even considering the idea of killing Eddie, the first of his three deckhands (the others being Wesley and a local Key-islander named Albert). A loner with no pity for himself or others, Harry acts solely to achieve his own selfish goals. In a 1943 letter to Howard Hawks, Hemingway attempted to downplay this aspect of the character, describing Harry as "a man who tried to buck this world single-handed and found that it couldn't be done and that men had to stick together to win." However, it is undeniable that Harry Morgan is a cold-blooded, venal, criminal manipulator.

The implied defense of Harry is that he only targets the "bad guys." However, it remains unclear whom Hemingway wants readers to empathize with. All other significant characters in the novel are introduced in part three, where Harry gradually steps aside to highlight two groups that symbolize the economic divide between America's wealthy and poor. The first group consists of rowdy bar patrons, including veterans, drunks, and labor organizers. The second group is primarily made up of luxury yacht owners docked at Key West's finger piers. This group features a rich playboy and his homosexual companion, an elderly grain broker chased by the Internal Revenue Service, a nymphomaniac Hollywood starlet, and, contrastingly, a happy family of a business tycoon who earned his fortune through honest work.

Other notable characters include Tommy and Helene Bradley, a sexually estranged couple, and Helene's lover, Richard Gordon, a prominent writer of proletarian novels who receives most of Hemingway's disdain. In a Paris Review interview with Philip Young, Hemingway insisted: "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector."

One might question whether this "detector" served Hemingway well during the writing of To Have and Have Not. The character of Richard Gordon appears to be a mere caricature, thinly veiling John Dos Passos, the author of the epic USA trilogy (1930-1936). Ironically, Gordon, who uses stereotypical characters and misjudges people, is given to clichés and is despised by genuine labor activists who label his novels as "shit." Hemingway's personal animosity towards the character strips Gordon of any narrative depth. Consequently, like the unlikable lawyer Bee-lips Simmons, the Marxist writer becomes just another cardboard figure. The novel's cast also includes Richard's wife, Helen, who, dissatisfied with Richard both in and out of bed, becomes involved with the eccentric but likable Professor MacWalsey.