The novella follows an old fisherman as he struggles to catch a gigantic marlin and turn his waning luck around. Over the course of this struggle the book contemplates masculinity, religion, fate, and the ultimate meaning (or lack thereof) of life.
Influenced in equal parts by the Great Depression, and the Marxist ideology that fuelled the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (on which Hemingway is reporting at the time), it is a blunt exploration of one man’s struggles with economic hardships, the circumstances into which he is forced, and the decisions he is forced to make.
One of his first novels set in the Western Hemisphere, To Have and Have Not tells the story of a fisherman forced by economic circumstances to run contraband from Cuba to the United States. It is a complex and layered narrative, combining two previously written short stories with a new novella.
