What was the immediate cause of Ernest Hemingway's death?

The immediate cause of Ernest Hemingway’s death was suicide by gunshot. On July 2, 1961, Hemingway fatally shot himself with a shotgun at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

His death followed years of serious physical and psychological problems. He had suffered multiple injuries, endured chronic pain, and received electroconvulsive treatments in 1961. His declining health and depression deeply concerned his wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway, and his doctors.

The weapon was reportedly one of Hemingway’s favored sporting shotguns. Accounts differ over the gun’s exact maker, but the central fact is not disputed: he died from a self-inflicted shotgun wound. The death was therefore not caused by a plane crash, alcohol poisoning, or a heart attack, although alcoholism and medical illness were part of his later-life struggles.

Hemingway was 61 and had outlived several major literary phases of his career, including the publication of The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea.