A Look into To Have and Have Not: Where Did It Go Wrong?

You may have been wondering how good is the book To Have and Have Not. To Have and Have Not, originally published in 1936 and written by Ernest Hemingway started off very well. It presents itself as a three part story primarily featuring Harry Morgan. Harry was an honest businessman. He chartered boats for a living and never accepted any bribes, until one day one of his customers robbed him of $880. In a state of panic, Harry began to take on immoral jobs such as human trafficking and other forms of smuggling by boat. During one of these jobs Harry is shot, and is forced to amputate one of his arms. His boat is also impounded by a government official. Harry begins a final attempt to make some money, with a new partner Albert, by stealing his impounded boat back, and harboring Cuban Revolutionists on it at sea after they rob a bank. Meanwhile, the main character shifts to Richard Gordon, whose wife cheated on him. He also cheated on his wife, and their marriage ends. Richard Gordon then goes to a pub and meets the man his wife cheated on him with, and he punches him. Going back to Harry, we find that he betrays the Cuban Revolutionists and finishes them off, but is shot in the gut in the process. He is brought back to shore, and dies in the hospital. Harry’s wife, Marie, skips his funeral and ends as a depressed widow.
To Have and Have Not features multiple main characters, so they seem like an adequate starting place to evaluate this book. Although these stories featuring different characters were interesting by themselves, as a whole it felt unfocused. I was thoroughly engaged when Harry was in the spotlight. He was always desperate for money, but with a degree of caution. These characteristics remained true until he ran out of money, and he became willing to do anything he could to support his family. Harry’s desire to scrape by made his dangerous endeavors all the more stressful, because there was so much on the line. He was by far the most developed main character, and I think that extending the story with just Harry would have made for a much better novel. That said, why were the other minor characters so lackluster by comparison? It is simply that they did not receive enough time to become as developed as Harry. Richard Gordon was certainly the closest, but something did not feel adequate about him. All we see is a frustrated and depressed man whose marriage has ended. I could not even feel bad for him because he cheated on his wife. To me, it was just a depressing story of a failed marriage, nothing more. There were also brief moments where the main focus shifted onto Albert and Marie, but they didn’t stand out by themselves. If anything, they seemed to be there just to further develop Harry, not to be their own characters.
The other issue that I thought this novel had was how it was organized. There were times where the main focus abruptly switched from one character to another. Although changing the perspective from one character to another’s is fine, the timing of the switch is definitely important for the reader to maintain focus while reading. There were also times when Harry would do something interesting, but leave us with nothing. The action didn’t have anything meaningful to follow it. The book would revert to a lackluster pace immediately after, and didn’t provide any details to further push along the story. I think that these times could have been a place to insert some kind of cliffhanger and just switch the characters. Whatever the fix could have been, it wasn’t there for me.
Although To Have and Have Not was not Hemingway’s best work, there is definitely some knowledge that is obtainable from this book. Hemingway attempts to utilize a variety of characters to focus on at different times. Although he is a talented writer, he did not do well at trying to juggle more than one main character. There are some authors who are able to write this kind of story, but they would definitely have a hard time writing it on the level of Hemingway, while he is in his comfort zone. After analyzing this book, I think that I would be more capable at writing a story that features multiple main characters, because I now know some mistakes that are made when writing one, such as an unequal distribution of time given to develop characters, and organization that causes the book to flow poorly from character to character. See you all next time!