Today is the 50-year anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s death by suicide. He killed himself with a shotgun after years of depression and paranoia. A. E. Hotchner, a friend of Ernest Hemingway’s, wrote a piece for the NYT about the last years of Ernest Hemingway’s life.

As described by A.E. Hotchner, who knew Ernest Hemingway well both as a friend and as a professional who assisted Ernest Hemingway in dramatizing his novels, Ernest Hemingway’s life started to rapidly go downhill soon after the author’s 60^th birthday. When A.E. Hotchner saw Ernest Hemimgway for a pheasant hunt, the author was paranoid about the possibility of FBI agents following him and told A.E. Hotchner to “ask Duke” about the FBI agents seated at the bar.

The tragedy is that in the case of Ernest Hemingway, FBI agents really were following him because of a belief that his activities in Cuba were suspicious.

“Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all.”

Before his death, his wife, Mary, said that Ernest was working on what would eventually be posthumously published as A Moveable Feast, and that he was speaking of killing himself often because of his severe depression. He was later admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he underwent 11 shock treatments. When home from the hospital, Ernest Hemingway attempted to end his own life with what might have been the same shotgun. He remained extremely depressed and also retained his belief that the FBI was out to get him, which is understandable given the fact that his phone calls were tapped even in the psychiatric hospital.

When asked about his depression, Ernest Hemingway said that he couldn’t live out his life the way he would have liked to any more. No writing, no friends, no joy. There was nothing for him to enjoy. One of the greatest authors of our times believed that his friends had abandoned him because they couldn’t believe his story.

Some depressions are caused by chemical imbalances. Hemingway’s depression appears to have been caused by something that was very real, but that he was powerless to change. None of the people who loved him could help him. Neither could the 11 shock treatments he received to treat his depression.

No one believed him.

Even though Ernest Hemingway’s depression was likely caused by his unusual situation, he may have been able to benefit from anti-depressants which have come a long way since Hemingway’s time.