Exits

clipped from www.todayinliterature.com The Hemingways and Suicide Memoirs written by those close to Hemingway convey different impressions of his suicide. Mary Hemingway does not refuse the idea that it was a noble, destroyed-but-not-defeated act, but she stresses the sure fact that her husband was mentally ill, and getting worse. Brother Leicester chooses the heroic interpretation: "Like a samurai who felt dishonored by the word or deed of another, Ernest felt his own body had betrayed him." Having hunted with his big brother, and heard him talk about giving animals "the gift of death," Leicester believes that Hemingway chose to give it to himself. Greg categorizes his father's death as "semi-voluntary," an act born of lifelong defiance and momentary delusion.