"The Crack Up"

Many readers associate the name F. Scott Fitzgerald with his life's most beloved work–The Great Gatsby. However, in stark contrast to that Jazz Age drama, his essay The Crack-Up (written in 1936 and featured in Esquire magazine) deals with a much less magnificent topic: midlife crisis. Although somewhat of a generalizing phrase, Fitzgerald's essay can be understood as simply that: an existential crisis catalyzed by the time-transcending buzz-kill of age. In the essay, Fitzgerald chronicles his personal "crack-up": a loss of self-identity leading into a spiral of declining self worth. The reader is led through Fitzgerald’s psychological journey: feigned direction in life; the sudden realization that all stability in his life is a façade; the black depression that follows as he realizes he has lost trajectory in life; and finally, tentative acceptance of an existence that is far from ideal. Throughout this journey, the reader is uncertain as to what the author’s purpose is. Fitzgerald’s account is highly personal, and seems to lack any objective in its narrative. However, if the reader persists on through Fitzgerald’s melancholy trek, they are rewarded with a bitter-sweet resolution and purpose. Fitzgerald resolves that, in order to bring himself from the grip of depression, he must accept that he is not as relevant as he once thought he was; and that he must reserve himself to the role of jaded miser in order to salvage his ability to function in society. Thus, through informing the reader on the topic of gradual depression–or “Cracking up”–Fitzgerald is able to prove his point that life manages to creak on, even when all seems lost. In order to make this point, Fitzgerald employs various types of rhetoric, but most prevalently an extended metaphor involving a cracked plate. He compares a person’s depressive breakdown to the cracking of a plate. Like the cracking of a plate, depression can happen slowly over time until it consumes a person. But also like a cracked plate, a person can be repurposed, though not to their former glory, thus connecting to the author’s argument that a “crack-up” isn’t the end.

Fitzgerald Cracks Up
Like these plates, Fitzgerald is cracked–not broken. (photo credit Tamara Maynes)