To Have and to Hold — Themes and Context

A Narrator Who Plays Roles

The first-person narrator is a man of many masks. In the opening pages, he sits quietly on his doorstep, but within a few paragraphs he has adopted the persona of a notorious pirate to outwit a group of cutthroats. He tells his companion Sparrow, “I have told them who I am,—that Kirby, to wit, whom an injurious world calls the blackest pirate unhanged.” The ease with which he slips into this role—and the theatrical language he uses (“Sheer audacity is at times the surest steed a man can bestride”)—suggests a man accustomed to deception. His past as a soldier is hinted at, but the excerpts leave much of his history obscure. What is clear is his relish for quick thinking and command, even when outnumbered.

Jeremy Sparrow’s Transformation

One of the most vivid moments in the excerpts is the sudden change in Jeremy Sparrow, the narrator’s companion. Described as a minister with a “grave, rugged, and deeply lined face,” Sparrow undergoes “a most remarkable transformation” when the narrator introduces him as a pirate mate. His face smooths, his eyes gain “a laughing devil,” and his mouth becomes “a loose-lipped, devil-may-care one.” The narrator notes that Sparrow’s “head with its aureole of bushy, grizzled hair set itself jauntily upon one side,” and he exclaims, “Odsbodikins, captain! … Adzooks!” This shift from pious to piratical is played for comedy, but it also raises questions about the characters’ true natures and the roles they adopt under pressure.

Setting as a Character: The Virginian Landscape

The natural world in these excerpts is not merely a backdrop but a force that mirrors the story’s tensions. The opening paragraph describes a profound stillness: “The winds are laid, and the restless leaves droop and are quiet. The low lap of the water among the reeds is like the breathing of one who sleeps in his watch beside the dead.” This image of a land holding its breath contrasts sharply with the violent action that follows—the pirate encounter, the threat of Spanish ships, and the narrator’s quick lies. The landscape is both beautiful and ominous, with “horned owls, the monster frogs, and that strange and ominous fowl … which we English call the whippoorwill” waiting to break the silence. The colony itself feels precarious, a thin line of English settlement against the wilderness and its dangers.

The excerpts offer only a glimpse of the novel’s full plot, but they reveal a writer skilled at balancing action with character. Readers should pay attention to the narrator’s shifting tone—sometimes sardonic, sometimes earnest—and to the way Johnston uses the colonial setting to heighten the stakes. The book rewards those who enjoy historical adventure with a literary bent, where every line of dialogue may hide a double meaning.

That Virginia planter's guarded heart, learned in hard corners, reminds me of a different sort of shelter—a girl finding quiet peace among redwoods. Both stories carry a loneliness that softens into belonging, though one battles pirates and the other, merely time. I often shelve them near each other, these two, and find the pairing gentle. A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story — Text and Context holds a similar warmth, felt like morning sun through cabin glass.