My personal rebellion against a literary giant.

For nearly a century, Ernest Hemingway has stood on an untouchable pedestal in the Western literary canon. He is praised for his sparse sentences, masculine heroes and unshakable influence on modern prose. Students study him, critics worship him and bookstores still grant him entire shelves. Yet for all his acclaim, my relationship with Hemingway has been defined not by admiration but by frustration, disappointment and ultimately, an extremely firm dislike. 

I know “hate” may sound dramatic, but it captures the visceral reaction I have each time I revisit his work. My reasons are layered. Some aesthetic, some philosophical and some deeply personal yet all contribute to why Hemingway and I will never see eye to eye and why I don’t think his works should be included in the curriculum of high schools or universities nearly as much as they are. 

Hemingway’s style is famously minimalist: short sentences, staccato rhythm and description stripped to the bone. Yet for me, this approach feels less like elegance and more like deprivation. His writing for me feels lacklustre, as if it is deprived of everything that makes art, well, art. Literature thrives on nuance, texture and emotional depth. In Hemingway’s world, feelings are implied but rarely expressed, leaving characters that often feel as hollow as the spaces between his clipped lines.

Where others see “subtext,” I see a narrative that refuses to emotionally engage. His heroes drink, brood, fish and fight, but rarely do they speak with vulnerability or complexity. Reading Hemingway sometimes feels like trying to extract warmth from a block of ice or trying to appease a professor who hates your work.

On top of this, Hemingway’s reputation for hyper-masculinity permeates not just his characters but the very structure of his stories. His protagonists occupy worlds where strength is stoic, suffering is silent and women are often flat objects rather than fully developed people.

Instead of challenging these norms, Hemingway cements them. The “Hemingway hero” is celebrated for his endurance, yet this model of manhood feels suffocating. It leaves little space for gentleness, softness or any remote emotional honesty. As modern readers, we expect more than stoicism disguised as depth. We expect humanity. 

One of my greatest frustrations with Hemingway’s writing is his treatment of women, especially early on in his writing. In his early works, such as The Sun Also Rises, his female characters often exist to comfort, inspire or break the male protagonist. Rarely do they live full lives of their own. While this does begin to lessen in his novel A Farewell to Arms, I find that a large majority of his works make women seem like an “other” rather than an equal. 

They are idealized, silenced or sidelined, their stories overshadowed by the men around them. As a reader who values multidimensional characters, this limitation feels not only outdated but creatively stifling. Literature should broaden perspectives, not reinforce narrow ones.

The main work I use to reference this article is his short story Hills Like White Elephants, where he describes a couple in a bar in Spain who are awaiting their train to Madrid. In this story, the couple are described as “the man” and “the girl” as they argue over her getting an operation. I feel that the use of calling the woman a “girl” while never referring to the man as a “boy” shows Hemingway’s clear disregard for women, their opinions and agency. 

While I understand his writing is a product of his time, I also reserve the right to critique his views on women, which were so clearly based in misogyny. 

Some readers love Hemingway’s starkness, his landscapes of war, wilderness and wounded souls. But his words rarely evoke any emotion for me. They feel distant, emotionally muted, morally grey and relentlessly bleak. While this can be done well in literature, and many of my favourite books are set in these environments, I feel that the lack of emotional depth in his portrayal of settings makes them fall short for me. There is no intensity in how he depicts these worlds that he creates, and thus the scenery and settings of his books fall short and don’t really grab my attention in a way that so many other books are easily able to do.

Even when he writes about love or beauty, there is an undercurrent of detachment, as though he is observing life from behind a glass wall. While this restraint appeals to many, I find myself craving stories that breathe, that feel, that allow space for wonder and freedom of thought, which Hemingway strays away from. 

Perhaps part of my dislike comes from the overwhelming reverence surrounding Hemingway. When a writer is canonized to such an extent, critique becomes almost taboo. In classrooms, we are told we “must” appreciate his contribution, his style, his influence.

But admiration cannot be forced. The pressure to revere Hemingway only amplifies my frustration with his work, because it reinforces the idea that literary greatness must look a certain way. Masculine. Restrained. Stoic. Sparse. Rejecting Hemingway becomes, in a sense, an act of reclaiming my own taste.

It’s partially because of this that I have my reasoning for thinking that Hemingway shouldn’t be as praised, revered and pushed to be in the curriculum of so many English classes. I, like many others, had to read some of his works for my high school English classes, and I felt it stifled the enjoyment and wonder that should come from reading. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have to read his works at all. On the contrary, I encourage people to read his works, but be able to look at them with a critical eye, rather than praising them blindly because of the author’s place in the literary canon. 

My dislike of Hemingway is not a wholesale rejection of his skill, nor a dismissal of his place in literary history. He shaped modern writing in undeniable ways. But personal taste is a mosaic of values, experiences and expectations, and mine simply diverges from what Hemingway offers.

I want stories that feel alive. I want characters who express what they feel. I want prose that breathes instead of bleeds. Hemingway’s writing was based solely on reality and not the emotional thoughts or feelings that lie underneath. Many found beauty in its starkness. I did not.

And that is perfectly fine. Literature is vast, and there is room for every voice, including those who choose to step out from under Hemingway’s long, minimalist shadow.