To Have and Have Not

In his 1930s novel “To Have and Have Not,” Ernest Hemingway narrates the story of Harry Morgan’s death—not his life, for all that is left for Morgan to do is die. Not only through the actual narration, but also with the writing style, Hemingway helps the reader catch a glimpse of Morgan’s life of uncertainty and instability by changing the speaker from time to time, without notice. Once a police officer in Miami, Fla., Morgan later became a fisherman (who also rented his boat out to tourists and taught them how to fish), alternating between Cuba and the Florida Keys.  Morgan’s life is not an easy one; desperate times demand desperate measures, and the 30s sure were desperate times. A Greek philosopher once said that man is born good and society corrupts him—is this Morgan’s case? Is Harry Morgan a victim of the circumstances? Is he a tragic hero?

Harry Morgan lost his arm while bootlegging: he was trying to earn some extra dollars to feed his family with, but American Marshals caught him; to make things worse, his boat got impounded.  This gives the reader a sense of Morgan as a wounded hero—the limitations of his physical body and his possessions express the limitations of his environment.  All these tragedies together do not make a martyr out of Morgan; on the contrary, he is determined to do something to not let his family starve: “But let me tell you, my kids ain’t going to have their bellies hurt and I ain’t going to dig sewers for the government for less money than will feed them. I can’t dig now anyway. I don’t know who made the laws but I know there ain’t no law that you got to go hungry,” (Hemingway, 96).  His determination to get not only himself but also his family out of the current bad situation makes him a hero: He will do whatever he has to do to avoid his family from starving.  However, it all goes bad.

There is not much that Morgan can do—he lost his boat, so he cannot collect money from tourists; he lost an arm, so he can no longer dig for the government; all that is left for him to do is go into illegal businesses: He gets hired by three Cubans who steal a bank, and Morgan’s job is to provide the escape vehicle—a boat.  As they are escaping, things go terribly wrong and all aboard get shot, including Morgan. As he lies dying in the boat, Morgan thinks,

I guess it was nuts all right. I guess I bit off too much more than I could chew. I shouldn’t have tried it. I had all right up the end. Nobody’ll know what happened. I wish I could do something about Marie: Plenty money on this boat.  I don’t even know how much.  Anybody be O.K. with that money. […] I guess I should have got a job in a filling station or something. I should have quit trying to go on boats. There’s no honest money in boats any more.  (Hemingway, 174)

As these words echo in the reader’s mind, Morgan is slowly transformed from an evil-doing, revengeful individualist into a caring husband and father (later on in the passage he wonders what will happen to Marie, his wife, and his two daughters), who regrets getting into this dirty business. Whether his regret arises from a sincere remorse for what has happened or because of his pitiful ending is irrelevant—by this time, the reader feels nothing but sympathy and compassion for Morgan, his wife, and kids. As he dies, Harry Morgan becomes a tragic hero.

For Morgan, everything is about the money, or about a job that will bring in money—it all basically boils down to survival. This is certainly a characteristic of male providers during the Great Depression—taking desperate measures during desperate times. David Gagne says that “[Harry Morgan] represents all the characters of the 1930s struggling to continue through hopelessness,” (“Placing Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not in the 1930s”).  Does this relation to the Depression “everyman” compensate for the wrong Morgan did? Does it forgive him? Does the fact that Morgan did all he did to prevent his daughters and wife from starving, or working for the government digging sewers, glorify him?  Is Harry Morgan the ultimate, glorified, tragic wounded hero that was persecuted by censorhip?

 

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. To Have and Have Not. New York: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1937.

Atkinson, Ted. Law and Order: Gangsters and Fascists.  8 Mar. 2004.  Law and Order: Gangsters and Fascists slide show presentation, 9 Mar. 2004. <http://www.aug.edu/~lngtba/4100/fascism_files/frame.htm&gt;