38 pages • 1 hour read
To Have And Have Not
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Chapters 9-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
A couple of months later, Harry and a group of men are gathered at Freddy’s place, the local bar. The narration switches to Albert, an old friend of Harry’s who has been trying to overcome low wages and feed his family since the Depression began.
A lawyer arrives looking for Juan, the local taxi driver. Harry verbally spars with him for a few moments until the lawyer asks to speak to Harry alone in the back room of the bar. While they are gone, the group moans about the curfew and how their freedoms are being limited. When Harry and the lawyer return, Harry presents Albert with the opportunity for a far higher wage than he makes digging sewer lines for the Civilian Conservation Corps. He and Albert take a drive to talk, and Harry reveals that the lawyer represents a group of strangers who want to charter his boat for a special trip to Cuba. When Albert reminds Harry that the boat is locked up in the customs port for his illegal liquor activity a few months prior, Harry chastises him for worrying about legalities while Albert’s wife and children are starving. Harry curses Key West’s class inequalities, saying that the rich are trying to turn the city into a “tourist town” (96) by forcing out the poor. The tirade makes Albert call him “a radical” (96).
Albert agrees to the job with Harry, and they drive to a predetermined location to meet with Bee-lips, the lawyer, and the group of Cuban men. The men and Harry haggle over the price of chartering his boat to run the men to Cabañas and finally agree to $200 plus a $1200 security payment on the boat. Harry, unsure of whether the trip will even happen, drives Albert home to his angry wife who rails against him for staying out late drinking.
Chapter 10 Summary
Harry’s stream-of-consciousness narration contemplates the risks and rewards of this mission to Cuba. He feels cornered by fate and society; while he knows he must take this mission to stay afloat, he is no stranger to the fact that illegal activity breeds more illegal activity. He questions whether he should even take Albert but ultimately realizes that he will need assistance due to his missing arm, which was presumably amputated after his return to Key West a few months prior. After calculating the logistics of stealing his boat back from customs and preparing it for the voyage, Harry convinces himself that this is a chance he must take for survival.
Chapter 11 Summary
Bee-lips the lawyer meets Harry back at Freddy’s bar to finalize the details of the trip. He reveals that the Cubans are planning to rob a bank to finance their revolution, and it will be up to Harry to get them out as quickly as possible.
Harry easily steals his boat back from customs. As he drifts the boat away from the dock, he notices the customs men did not disable the motors or drain the gas, so the boat doesn’t need much for the trip. He and Bee-lips make the final plans for meeting time and place, and Harry agrees to be ready in two hours. After Bee-lips sails back to shore in the skiff, Harry ponders how a young man such as Bee-lips ever got involved in such a sketchy situation.
Chapter 12 Summary
When Harry returns home, his wife, Marie, wants to be intimate. Harry, still struggling with feelings of inadequacy after losing his arm, makes flippant remarks about his abilities as a man. Marie reassures him that he is the best man she’s ever been with and dreams about the day when they can go on vacation again, perhaps to New Orleans. As Harry falls asleep, Marie looks at him and wonders how she got so lucky.
Early the next morning, Marie helps Harry get the final jugs of gas for the boat. As they drive toward the dock, Harry innocently mentions her hairstyle and how much he likes it and tells Marie that when he returns from this big trip, they will take a trip to Miami together.
Chapter 13 Summary
A few hours later, Harry is at Freddy’s bar when two customs officers walk in inquiring about his boat’s location. Harry denies having any idea what happened to it and instead blames the officers for letting his boat get stolen.
Shortly after, Bee-lips enters and informs Harry that the customs men found where he hid the boat, seizing it again. Harry is enraged, but Bee-lips tells him that the Cuban men want to move out tonight. Harry promises to get his hands on another boat and orders Bee-lips to bring him the original $1200 security payment in two hours.
Harry rudely tells Albert that his help is not needed on this trip. He then turns to Freddy and asks to borrow his boat. He promises the $1200 as security, and Freddy agrees.
Chapter 14 Summary
Harry returns home for lunch with Marie and his three daughters before the evening’s events unfold. He reveals to Marie that the customs men found his boat, and he laments that his daughters want money for the picture show—money he does not have. After Marie must cut up his steak for him, Harry calls himself “a hell of a nuisance” (126), prompting Marie to bolster him with love and confidence. Marie immediately worries when Harry asks her to bring down a semi-automatic weapon from the attic and four clips, but she loads the bullets when he asks her to do so.
As Harry looks around his home, he sees all the comforts and welcoming decor that Marie has in place to make the house a home. He wonders why he can never enjoy what he has, but he realizes that this final trip will be what he needs to make everything right again. He tells Marie goodbye, and she cries at the final sight of his face.
Chapters 9-14 Analysis
Harry’s smuggling increases in intensity while his physical potential decreases. The loss of his arm creates a level of insecurity in him, and he continually overcompensates by acting tough and relying on his “cojones,” or his natural male virility. The only moment wherein he displays a sense of inferiority comes while being intimate with Marie—in those moments where his masculinity matters most to him, he worries that he will not be able to perform to her satisfaction. Their intimacy, displayed in quick, terse dialogue, speaks volumes about their relationship. They are mutually loving and supportive, overlook each other’s imperfections, and offer each other a safe port in the storm of society’s judgment.
The stylistic variations in these chapters reflect the pressure of the situation. The shorter chapters, presented in quick succession, mimic the pace of the action rising to Harry’s most dangerous trip yet. The switch into stream-of-consciousness narration in Chapter 10 opens a portal directly into Harry’s thought process surrounding the trip. This is not merely a way to make money—it is an issue of survival. He did not put himself in this position: Society did, a society that rewards the “Haves” and makes the “Have Nots” pay out of empty pockets.
Harry’s disgust with the status quo reaches its apex here. He recognizes the unfairness of life and knows that the poor will always be trampled by the rich, who are awarded every opportunity to do so. When Albert calls him a “radical,” it becomes clear that Harry has unwittingly become more like the radicals he transports than he’d care to admit. Both he and the Cuban militants see major problems with society; the only difference is the Cubans are willing to take dramatic action in retaliation, and Harry is only trying to survive with his family intact.
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