Photography Essay of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crack-Up
Welcome to the first portion of our Digital Writing portfolio project at University of Texas at Dallas for Professor Vance.
This photography essay portrays the mental break down Fitzgerald experiences in his piece The Crack-Up. After a lifetime of failing to succeed, Fitzgerald realizes it might not be what he truly wants. He loses all of his values, dismissing all of the facets of his life he once enjoyed. Fitzgerald becomes a cold-hearted man who loves nothing but himself spiraling into a complete lack of self. The pictures presented below show this progression. From his literature that has far proceeded his own life, Fitzgerald was a seemingly happy human...
This photography essay portrays the mental break down Fitzgerald experiences in his piece The Crack-Up. After a lifetime of failing to succeed, Fitzgerald realizes it might not be what he truly wants. He loses all of his values, dismissing all of the facets of his life he once enjoyed. Fitzgerald becomes a cold-hearted man who loves nothing but himself spiraling into a complete lack of self. The pictures presented below show this progression. From his literature that has far proceeded his own life, Fitzgerald was a seemingly happy human...
" But now I wanted to be absolutely alone and so arranged a certain insulation from ordinary cares."
"...what he had before him was not the dish that he had ordered for his forties. In fact - since he and the dish were one, he described himself as a cracked plate, the kind that one wonders whether it is worth preserving."
"I realized that in those two years, in order to preserve something -an inner hush maybe, maybe not - I had weaned myself from all the things I used to love - that every act of life from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner had become an effort."
"Listen, suppose this wasn't a crack in you - suppose it was a crack in the Grand Canyon." "The crack's in me," I said heroically. "...Listen! The world only exists through your apprehension of it, and so it's much better to say that it's not you that's cracked - it's the Grand Canyon."
"Now a man can crack in many ways - can crack in the head, in which case the power of decision is taken from you by others; or in the body, when one can but submit to the white hospital world; or in the nerves."
"In this you can try to estimate what has been sheared away and what is left. Only when this quiet came to me did I realize that I had gone through two parallel experiences."
"So there was not an "I" anymore - not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect - save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more. It was strange to have no self - to be like a little boy left along in a big house, who knew that now he could do anything he wanted to do, but found that there was nothing he wanted to do - "
"...so the question became one of finding why and where I had changed, where was the leak through which, unknown to myself, my enthusiasm and my vitality had been steadily and prematurely trickling away."
"The natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness."
"I will try to be a correct animal though, and if you throw me a bone with enough meat on it I may even lick your hand."
Creative Commons URLs In Order From Top to Bottom:
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F_Scott_Fitzgerald_1921.jpg
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Clipart_plate.svg/1024px-Clipart_plate.svg.png
- http://pixgood.com/broken-plate.html
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F_Scott_Fitzgerald_1921.jpg
- https://flic.kr/p/6EFyFb
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014_Columbia_University_The_Thinker.jpg
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/filterforge/25159099963
- http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=184769&picture=crumpled-paper
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/turinboy/2946943615
- https://pixabay.com/en/paper-leaf-crumples-close-crumpled-894361/
- https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-pen-near-white-printer-paper-147633/
- https://pixabay.com/p-1928741/?no_redirect
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AF_Scott_Fitzgerald_and_wife_Zelda_September_1921.jpg
