narration, Harry's internal monologue in a more coherent stream of thought than typical stream of consciousness, and an omniscient narrator who dips in and out of characters' minds. The imagery, metaphors, and similes often have urban or military origins—like a gigantic marlin described in terms of an airplane, submarine, or depth bomb, or the two icons of the lawless Prohibition era: the Thompson machine gun and sawed-off shotgun, favored weapons in gangland shootouts. While the book's irony is often overdone, its symbolism can be subtle and poignant. Swindled by Mr. Johnson out of a significant amount of money, Harry is reduced to peddling his "cojones" to make a living. In a striking parallel, chapter twenty-four introduces Henry Carpenter, who, as a lover and hanger-on of Mr. Wallace Johnston, also peddles his cojones to the wealthy. Overall,To Have and Have Not fails to convince, whether as a socio-economic study, a study of the poor, or a satire of the rich. Similarly, it falls short as a critique of government ineptitude, a hero study, or even as a novel. Despite some strong writing in the sections involving Harry, the plot is disjointed, and in places (especially towards the end), the writing is uninspired. The modernistic devices used feel contrived, culminating in a portrayal of the rich that has the social and intellectual subtlety of a precocious adolescent.

When Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not was released in 1937, it did not receive favorable reviews. Delmore Schwartz harshly criticized it, saying, "[It] is a stupid and foolish book, a disgrace to a good writer, a book which should never have been printed." Many other critics shared this sentiment. The general opinion was that the novel was poorly written and lacked coherence. This raises the question: what was it about the tale of Harry Morgan, an ex-police officer and part-time rumrunner turned charter fishing boat captain, that elicited such strong negative reactions?

The 1930s, marked by the Great Depression, was also a time when the proletarian novel, literary manifestos, and socially committed writers were prominent in America. Ernest Hemingway did not conform to this image. Following his second marriage, he began living in relative opulence, embarking on African safaris, fishing from his forty-foot yacht, and showing disdain for the Leftist press, which alternately courted and criticized him for neglecting "the Cause." Even more concerning for a serious writer, he had not published a novel in eight years—not since A Farewell to Arms in 1929. His commercial short stories suggested that his once brilliant talent was fading, settling into mediocrity. As poet Archibald MacLeish remarked, "Famous at twenty-five; thirty a master." Throughout the 1930s, Hemingway struggled with finding inspiration and artistic direction. Simultaneously, he felt envious of the critical acclaim received by writers like John Dos Passos, who graced the cover of Time in 1936. To Have and Have Not was the product of Hemingway's prolonged artistic reinvention and a rebuttal to the Marxists who had criticized him for choosing his own path instead of joining the fight alongside the masses.

In many respects, To Have and Have Not stands out as Hemingway's most socially committed work. It's also his only novel set in America, albeit on the edges, in the Florida Keys. Hemingway lived in Key West during the 1930s, a time when his domestic concerns grew more pronounced. He was particularly troubled by the situation of World War One veterans employed by the government for highway construction in the Keys. On Labor Day in 1935—a poignant irony not lost on Hemingway—a hurricane devastated the Keys, destroying a Civilian Conservation Corps work camp. Hundreds of veterans perished in the floodwaters. Hemingway, after delivering supplies to the survivors on his boat "Pilar," penned an enraged article for the Marxist publication The New Masses titled "Who Murdered the Vets?" In this piece, he questioned why the homeless and poorly paid veterans had been left in the camp despite advance hurricane warnings. Essentially, Hemingway accused federal and state officials of manslaughter. These concerns are echoed in his novel, evident in its economic perspective and in the final scenes where drunken, quarrelsome veterans share tales of Depression-era squalor and decline. The novel's social "message" is so overt and didactic that it lends credence to critic Schwartz's comments. While the initial parts of the novel are relatively free from ideological bluntness and authorial intrusion, the third part is filled with Hemingway's not-so-subtle reflections on the disparities between society's "haves" and "have-nots." In the second part of the book, a poignant question from Harry's Black deckhand, Wesley, captures the essence of 1930s economic discontent. "Why they run liquor now?" Wesley asks, as both men suffer from gunshot wounds sustained during a failed smuggling operation from Cuba. "Prohibition's over. Why they keep up a traffic like that? Why don't people be honest and decent and make a decent honest living?"

One straightforward answer to that question is that, for many who were fortunate enough to have employment, honest work still paid only meager wages. Breadlines, soup kitchens, mass unemployment, shanty towns (known as Hoovervilles), bankruptcies, abandoned farms, and widespread despair characterized the Great Depression. President Roosevelt's inaugural speech captured this when he said, "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." Similarly, Captain Willie expressed his frustration to two Florida bureaucrats who later confiscated Harry's boat and livelihood, saying, "Who the hell do you eat off of with people working here in Key West for the government for six dollars and a half a week?" This looming hardship is a constant presence for the local Conchs working for starvation wages, the prostitutes facing new curfew regulations, and Harry, who turns to illegal hustling when the Depression devastates charter boat fishing.

Another perspective on Wesley's question centers around the economic twist on the "rags to riches" theme, integral to the American Dream. Harry's post-Prohibition smuggling acts as a form of civil disobedience, entirely American in spirit, opposing government interference through high alcohol taxes. In his own way, Harry Morgan mirrors figures like Joseph Kennedy, who amassed a fortune during Prohibition by bootlegging whiskey and became a symbol of economic success, even as he and his wife established a home-grown version of the Royal Family. While Joe Kennedy had the resources to avoid trouble, the small-scale operator Harry ends up in part three without his right arm or his boat, driven by a deep conviction that "there ain't no law that you got to go hungry."

To Have and Have Not strives in various ways to evoke a class- and society-conscious image of the era. It portrays drunken, dehumanized veterans who fight each other to prove their toughness, two generations of "sporting women" who trade in their only assets, Cuban revolutionaries spouting political slogans, vindictive government officials who disdain the average worker, and the corrupt, vacuous, and wealthy "haves." However, it's hard to shake the feeling that, in shedding his political indifference, Hemingway has not overcome his political naivete. His criticism of the upper classes often devolves into accusations of sexual impotence, aberration, or promiscuity, leaving readers to question his intentions. Similarly, his contrasts between the privileged "haves" and the underprivileged Harry (who, after all, owns a house in Florida, nice furniture, a piano, a car, several guns, and a large boat with two engines) are so contrived that, as the left-leaning Nation criticized, "nothing could be more inept here, more lacking in true insight."

The criticism may be severe, but it holds some validity. Despite the book's inconsistencies, there are moments that capture the essence of Hemingway—subtle, tough, and ironic, particularly in his portrayal of the early Cuban revolution. Although deeply engaged in the Spanish Civil War and producing agitprop for the Loyalists (such as the 1937 film, The Spanish Earth), Hemingway demonstrates a nuanced perspective on the slogans promoting proletarian dictatorship, the camaraderie of workers, and the people's revolution in Cuba. The biting irony that undercuts the young Cuban's justification of Stalinist terrorism, along with Harry's blunt remarks, makes it difficult to see how any Marxist group could interpret To Have and Have Not as straightforward propaganda. However, their misjudgment of Hemingway's discernment is evident in Edmund Wilson's frustrated 1939 observation: "the Left . . . received his least credible piece of fiction as a delivery of a new revelation."

If Hemingway's goal was to craft a fictional account of societal decay, his success should be gauged not by his attacks on the decadent wealthy, but by the more nuanced scenes that, like his famous narrative iceberg, convey profound truths. "When the fleet's in New York and you go ashore ... there's old guys with long beards come down and you can piss in their beards for a dollar," boasts a masochistic veteran. This stark depiction of elderly men from society's margins offering themselves for such humiliation speaks volumes about poverty and despair, more so than pages of outraged prose. The harsh reality that many will endure any degradation for money reveals as much as the existence of a market for such perverse services. Unyielding yet subtle, this image is classic Hemingway, illustrating the erosion of the American Dream.

Discussing To Have and Have Not is challenging without mentioning hard-boiled fiction, a uniquely American literary form that emerged in the early 20th century and peaked during the 1930s and 1940s. The rapid rise in interest and production of crime fiction was so significant that the detective story quickly became a distinct category in the magazine industry. By 1905, it even had its own heading in The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. By the early 1930s, hard-boiled fiction had exploded on newsstands, evidenced by the surge of pulp magazines like Action Detective, Clues, and Black Mask. Although Hemingway claimed to dislike the hard-boiled writing style, he did express admiration for Raymond Chandler, one of the most famous writers in the genre. Published in 1937, To Have and Have Not came out several years after Chandler's works began appearing in Black Mask and other magazines, but before Chandler's acclaimed first novel, The Big Sleep (1939).

In 1945, Hollywood released the first film adaptation of To Have and Have Not. The screenplay, crafted by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman, was closely overseen by producer-director Howard Hawks. The film primarily focused on the first chapter of the 26-chapter book. Despite using the title To Have and Have Not to leverage Hemingway's popularity, Hawks shared the opinion of critics who believed the book was "not worth much." He felt it lacked potential as a movie because it was too much a proletarian novel of the 1930s. Consequently, the film's setting was shifted from Key West during peacetime to Martinique during World War II. The Cuban revolutionaries in the book were replaced by a member of the French resistance and his attractive wife. With Humphrey Bogart cast as Harry Morgan and a local hotel as the backdrop, the film bore a striking resemblance to the 1943 classic Casablanca. There is evidence suggesting the studio intended this similarity. After the preview, the studio chief sent a memo to the staff: "Polish up the picks, shovels, and pans for the gold mine on the way in Howard Hawks' production of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not ... which is not only a second Casablanca but two-and-a-half times what Casablanca was."

The final product, a 101-minute black-and-white epic, was photographed by Sid Hickox and co-starred the then-new starlet, Lauren Bacall, alongside veteran actor Walter Brennan as Eddie, Dolores Moran, and Hoagy Carmichael. The story follows an American fishing boat captain who becomes entangled with a young female drifter and some French resistance fighters pursued by Nazis. Bogart and Bacall share cigarettes, wisecracks, and double entendres, while the movie features several musical numbers and hardboiled dialogue. The plot makes it evident that the film was primarily a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart. In the 1948 film Key Largo, which also starred Bogey and Bacall, director John Huston used another fragment of the book—the gunfight on the boat—as the film's climax. The second significant adaptation of Hemingway's material is The Breaking Point, directed by Michael Curtiz in 1950 (famous for Casablanca), starring John Garfield and Leona Charles. In this version, Key West becomes Newport, California, and there are no revolutionaries; the political elements are entirely absent. The charter boat captain, Harry, is happily married with two daughters and becomes inadvertently involved in smuggling Chinese immigrants for Mr. Sing, whom he kills in self-defense. This adaptation also primarily covers the first part of Hemingway's novel, yet the author expressed satisfaction with the film.

The most recent film inspired by To Have and Have Not was released in 1958. Titled The Gun Runners, it was filmed under several working names, including Rub My Back, One Trip Across, and Ernest Hemingway's Gun Runners. Although these titles were primarily for promotional purposes, the film remains closer to the original book compared to the earlier adaptations. Produced by Clarence Green and directed by Don Siegel, with a screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring, the film features Sam Martin (Audie Murphy) and his alluring wife Lucy (Patricia Owens). Sam, who operates a charter boat service, loses an expensive rod and reel during a fishing trip with a man named Mr. Peterson. When Peterson refuses to pay for the loss, Sam teams up with a dubious character named Hanagan to smuggle machine guns to Cuba. During the final, ill-fated run, Hanagan betrays Sam by shooting him in the shoulder. However, Hanagan meets his own demise in a dramatic shootout that concludes the movie.