Chester McKee

Chester McKee is a minor character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a pale, feminine photographer who lives in the apartment below the New York love nest of Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson. He appears only during the drunken party at Myrtle's apartment, where his professional pretensions, social climbing, and the strained dynamics of his marriage are briefly but vividly exposed. McKee serves as a representative figure of the grubby, aspirational fringe that orbits the Buchanan-Wilson affair, a man whose artistic ambitions are as hollow as the society he seeks to enter.

Identity and Introduction

Chester McKee is introduced as a "pale, feminine man from the flat below" who arrives at Myrtle's apartment with his wife. He has just shaved, as evidenced by a white spot of lather still on his cheekbone, and he greets everyone in the room with marked respect. He informs Nick Carraway that he is in the "artistic game," and Nick later gathers that McKee is a photographer. The dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson's mother that hangs on the wall, described as hovering "like an ectoplasm," is McKee's work. His wife boasts that he has photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since their marriage, a statistic that underscores both his professional focus and the obsessive, perhaps controlling, nature of their relationship.

Artistic Pretensions and Social Climbing

McKee's artistic pretensions are on full display during the party. He regards Mrs. Wilson intently, moving his hand back and forth in front of his face as he considers the lighting, and declares he would like to "bring out the modelling of the features" and "get hold of all the back hair." When his wife objects to changing the light, he sharply silences her with a "SH!" He later asserts that he has "done some nice things out on Long Island," specifically naming two studies: "Montauk Point—The Gulls" and "Montauk Point—The Sea." He expresses a desire to do more work on Long Island, asking only for a "start," and Tom Buchanan mockingly suggests Myrtle give him a letter of introduction to her husband, George Wilson, so he can do studies of him—"George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump, or something like that." This exchange reveals McKee's eagerness to network and Tom's contemptuous view of his ambitions.

The Party's Aftermath and a Strange Encounter

As the party descends into chaos after Tom breaks Myrtle's nose, McKee is found asleep on a chair, his fists clenched in his lap "like a photograph of a man of action." Nick Carraway wipes the dried lather from his cheek. When the violence erupts, McKee awakens from his doze and starts in a daze toward the door, turning back to stare at the scene—the scolding women and the bleeding Myrtle—before continuing out. Nick follows him. In the elevator, McKee suggests Nick come to lunch sometime, and when Nick agrees, McKee says "Anywhere." The narrative then shifts into a fragmented, dreamlike sequence: Nick finds himself standing beside McKee's bed, with McKee sitting up between the sheets in his underwear, holding a great portfolio and reciting titles: "Beauty and the Beast . . . Loneliness . . . Old Grocery Horse . . . Brook'n Bridge . . ." This ambiguous passage, with its ellipses and surreal juxtaposition, leaves the nature of their encounter—whether it is a drunken hallucination, a sexual liaison, or simply a continuation of the party's disorientation—deliberately unresolved. The scene then dissolves into Nick lying half-asleep in the cold lower level of Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune and waiting for the four o'clock train.

Narrative Role and Significance

Chester McKee functions as a minor but telling figure within the novel's social landscape. He embodies the desperate, small-time aspirant who clings to the fringes of wealth and glamour, hoping for a break. His photography, with its pretentious titles and his wife's obsessive documentation, mirrors the novel's own concern with image, illusion, and the construction of identity. The strange, ambiguous encounter with Nick in the bedroom—the only moment in the novel where Nick's heterosexuality is even implicitly questioned—adds a layer of disquiet and moral ambiguity to the already sordid afternoon. McKee ultimately vanishes from the narrative, a forgotten participant in the wreckage of the party, a ghost of the "artistic game" that proves as empty as the society it serves.