I believe Hemingway surveyed his literary history and then carefully chose the influences he would need to become the writer he wanted to be. Today the American tradition continues in that post-modern writers are either choosing Hemingway as a literary predecessor or are seeking the intellectual means with which to divorce themselves from his lineage.

Jeffrey Meyers notes that Hemingway “followed a Renaissance tradition of always going to the expert teachers to absorb what he wanted to know”. He traveled and lived, then studied and wrote about each new adventure and wonderful place. Hemingway showed the people of the world what he had found, so they could fall in love with it too. Marlin fishing off Key West and Cuba, bullfighting in Spain, and African Safari for the same animals he fell in love with at the Field Museum in Chicago when he was a boy.

By setting such a strong male role model, is it any wonder that the feminist movement attacked Hemingway, who died in 1961, and couldn’t then defend himself? The attack of the scholarly ranks began the dissection of Hemingway’s work primarily on the basis of its gender issues.