To Have And Have Not

‘“What did you kill him for?’ ‘To keep from killing twelve others,’ I told him.” 

This conversation between Eddy and Harry reveals Harry’s character. Unlike Sing, Harry is unwilling to manipulate innocent people for monetary gain; rather, he chooses to save the rest of the passengers, even though he considers them racially inferior.

“‘I’m a good man,’ he said. ‘You oughtn’t to talk to me like that.’ ‘They can’t make it fast enough to keep you a good man,’ I told him.”

Eddy’s reliance on alcohol to get through the day speaks to the level of avoidance in the Conch lifestyle. When faced with abject poverty, the only “surety” that he can rely on is the comforting numbness of rum, a dependence anchoring him within a vicious cycle.

“The other man leaned forward. ‘He’s Frederick Harrison,’ he said impressively. ‘I never heard of him,’ said Captain Willie. ‘Well, you will,’ said Frederick Harrison. ‘And so will everyone in this stinking jerkwater little town if I have to grub it out by the roots.’”

Captain Willie and Frederick Harrison represent the dueling integrities between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots.” Willie is unwilling to jeopardize his fellow Conch, Harry, by betraying his illegal activity. He must face Harrison, whose wealth gives him the power to command allegiance and respect.

“I thought you’d be interested in these things as a government man. Ain’t you mixed up in the prices of things that we eat or something? Ain’t that it? Making them more costly or something. Making the grits cost more and the grunts less?”

Willie’s accusatory remark to Harrison is actually an attack on the government itself: a government that prides itself on maximizing its power by abusing its people. This condemnatory reflection on the American government during the Great Depression is shared by the war veterans later in the novel.

“Above the roar of the motors and the high, slapping rush of the boat through the water he felt a strange, hollow singing in his heart. He always felt this way coming home at the end of a trip. I hope they can fix that arm, he thought. I got a lot of use for that arm.”

Despite the abject failure of the rum-smuggling operation, Harry’s bravado does not allow him to wallow in losses. His confidence, bolstered by a continued refusal to submit to the starvation lifestyle of the majority of other Conchs, persists even in the face of the unspoken reality that he will probably lose his arm.

“‘It’s getting to be a hell of a town,’ Freddy says. ‘Hell of a town is right. You just walk outside to get a sandwich and a coca-cola, and they arrest you and fine you fifteen dollars.’”

The government’s inability to pull citizens out of poverty during the Great Depression leads to those citizens engaging in illegal activity to make ends meet, such as rum-running and sex work. Curfews, put in place to stop that illicit activity, merely put more shackles on people looking for any sense of freedom and normalcy in a world that has already taken everything from them.

“But my family is going to eat as long as anybody eats. What they’re trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town. That’s what I hear. I hear they’re buying up lots, and then after the poor people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they’re going to come in and make it into a beauty spot for tourists.”

Harry’s rampage against money’s power reflects the vast inequalities between the social classes. The “Haves,” who have already boasted about removing the shanty-like aspect of Key West, cannot possibly feel the effect of the Depression as much as the “Have Nots,” who are marginalized and forgotten by both government and society.

“The hell with my arm. You lose an arm you lose an arm. There’s worse things than lose an arm. You’ve got two arms and you’ve got two of something else. And a man’s still a man with one arm or with one of those.”

Masculine bravado, a vital component of Harry’s personality, is not defined by physical perfection. It is a mental state, an awareness of one’s own power, that determines the potential of a man.

“There’s a smart kid who had a good chance once. He’s a good lawyer, too. But it made me cold to hear him say it himself. He put his mouth on his own self all right. It’s funny how a man can mouth something. When I heard him mouth himself it scared me.”

Bee-lips embodies the fallen man who has lost all sense of himself, as Harry recognizes before the fatal mission. Though Bee-lips and Harry have both sunken to illegal activity, Bee-lips feels the pressure and needs to escape, while Harry remains focused on providing for his family by whatever means necessary.

“He sat at the table and looked at the piano, the sideboard and the radio, the picture of September Morn, and the pictures of the cupids holding bows behind their heads, the shiny real-oak table and the shiny real-oak chairs and the curtains on the windows and he though, What chance have I to enjoy my home? Why am I back to worse than where I started? It’ll all be gone too if I don’t play this right.”

The pressure of preserving his life’s status quo weighs on Harry as he questions helping the Cubans escape to Cuba. Though he is better off than most of the Conchs, the illusion of stability is a tenuous one, held together only by the money that comes in through illegal means.

“I could stay here now and I’d be out of it. But what the hell would they eat on? Where’s the money coming from to keep Marie and the girls? I’ve got no boat, no cash, I got no education. What can a one-armed man work at? All I’ve got is my cojones to peddle.”

In the final hours before the trip to Cuba, Harry revisits the desperation he feels about keeping his family together. Though he has no professional attributes that would deem him successful, he has his masculinity, and that is enough to carry him through the dangerous trip.

“One bunch of Cuban government bastards cost me my arm shooting at me with a load when they had no need to and another bunch of U.S. ones took my boat. Now I can give up my home and get thanks. No thanks. The hell with it, he thought. I got no choice in it.”

Harry feels backed into a corner, turned aside by a government who refuses to protect him. To him, he is a man against the overarching rules and power of all governments who seek to impose their will upon the people—a main factor that leads to his illegal smuggling operations.

“There were Conchs that would starve to death before they’d steal all right. Plenty in this town with their bellies hollering right now. But they’d never make a move. They’d just starve a little every day. They started starving when they were born; some of them.”

The shanty villages in Key West have not been built overnight; they are the products of generational poverty exacerbated by the Great Depression. A Conch may not have money, but they have integrity, even if it ruins them. Harry does not share this sense of morality with them, which is why he often creates a divide between himself and the other Conchs.

“I feel badly about that. You know he doesn’t mean to do wrong. It’s just what that phase of the revolution has done to him.”

Harry, who continually participates in his own form of revolution against the government, does not see the connection between him and Roberto, the Cuban revolutionary. Both men have been radicalized to the point of impaired self-awareness.

“‘We want to start clean and give every man a chance. We want to end the slavery of the guajiros, you know, the peasants, and divide the big sugar estates among the people that work them. But we are not Communists.’ He’s a radical, Harry thought. That’s what he is, a radical.”

Ironically, as Harry listens to Emilio explain the rationale behind the revolution, he views the Cubans as radicalized. He cannot see that he himself promotes the same mentality in pursuing liberation from the control of the rich and powerful.

“Each time he took a breath the hose coiled colder and firmer in his lower abdomen and he could feel it like a big, smooth-moving snake in there, above the sloshing of the lake.”

 As he lies dying in the spilled gasoline, the path of the gut-shot bullet creates the feeling of a snake, its destruction slowly moving through him. This reality overshadows his hard exterior, and he must face his impending death.

“Love was the greatest thing, wasn’t it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have. And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie.” 

Though the “Haves” exude a sense of perfection and glory, life is not so wonderful behind the scenes. They have traded love and loyalty for money and power, which is a stark contrast to the “Have Nots,” who have no money but have people who care for them.

“The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of house; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grits and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, interbreeding and the comforts of religion.”

 Through Richard Gordon’s eyes, the small impoverished area of Conch town is crowded and bare, but the inner virtue cannot be defined by the exterior shambles. The Conchs may have lost their money, but they have retained what makes them human.

“They’ve run the camp in a way to invite an epidemic, but the poor bastards won’t die. They shipped a few of us to Tortugas but that’s healthy now. Besides, we wouldn’t stand for it. So they’ve brought us back. What’s the next move? They’ve got to get rid of us.”

 In a powerful condemnation of the American government, the war veterans at Freddy’s bar accuse Uncle Sam of attempting to kill those men who dedicated their lives and mental health to the war effort. Much like the lack of support the government has for the starving poor, it also turns its back on veterans, implying that the government only works for those who can monetarily control it.

“We have been beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the only pride is in being able to take it.”

 Like the rich government men destroy Harry’s livelihood and push him toward a life of crime, so does the American government destroy the war veterans, pushing them towards liquor. As seen with Eddy and the rest of the Conchs, liquor is often the best way to avoid the harsh realities of life: by drowning them in a bottle.

“The money on which it was not worth while for him to live was one hundred and seventy five dollars more a month than the fisherman Albert Tracy had been supporting his family on at the time of his death three days before.”

The irony here highlights the absolute selfishness and privilege exhibited by the “Haves.” Henry Carpenter, contemplating suicide over the loss of his funds, cannot comprehend a life spent under budget, while the Conchs must live and support their families on far less.

“There are no suicides when money’s made that way.”

 As a contrast to the other “Haves,” the Jacobson family has not made their fortune on the backs of other people’s misery. Therefore, they do not face the same internal struggles that come when morality is jeopardized.

“As they turned onto the worn white coral of the Rocky Road the headlight of the car showed a man walking unsteadily along ahead of them. ‘Some poor rummy,’ thought Marie. ‘Some poor goddamned rummy.’”

Echoing her sentiments from the beginning of the novel, Marie unknowingly equates Richard Gordon to poor drunken Eddy. Underneath the glitter of money, there is not much that separates the “Haves” from the “Have Nots,” after all.