Montauk Point—The Gulls

Montauk Point—The Gulls is a photographic study by Chester McKee, a pale, feminine man who lives in the flat below the apartment that Tom Buchanan keeps for his mistress, Myrtle Wilson. McKee, who describes himself as being in the "artistic game," is a photographer whose work includes the dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson's mother that hangs in the apartment, hovering "like an ectoplasm on the wall." The study is one of two that McKee mentions during a drunken gathering at the apartment, the other being Montauk Point—The Sea. Both works are framed and displayed downstairs in McKee's own living quarters, suggesting a modest attempt at artistic recognition within the cramped, pretentious world of the lower middle class.

Context and Creation

The mention of Montauk Point—The Gulls occurs during the chaotic party scene in Chapter 2, where Tom, Nick Carraway, Myrtle, and a small circle of acquaintances—including McKee, his wife, and Myrtle's sister Catherine—have gathered in the small apartment on 158th Street. McKee, who has just shaved, still bears a white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he is most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. When he asserts that he has "done some nice things out on Long Island," Tom Buchanan responds with blank indifference, asking "Two what?" McKee clarifies that he means two studies, naming Montauk Point—The Gulls and Montauk Point—The Sea. The exchange highlights the disconnect between McKee's earnest artistic ambitions and the dismissive, bored reactions of the wealthy Tom, who sees little value in the photographer's work.

Artistic Significance and Symbolism

The title "Montauk Point—The Gulls" evokes the easternmost tip of Long Island, a place of natural beauty and isolation, yet McKee's photographs are never described in detail, leaving their content to the reader's imagination. The pairing with "Montauk Point—The Sea" suggests a series of seascapes, perhaps capturing the gulls and the ocean in a romantic, picturesque manner. However, the context of their mention—amid the smoky, claustrophobic apartment filled with tasteless furniture and the over-enlarged photograph of Myrtle's mother—undercuts any genuine artistic merit. The studies become symbols of McKee's pretension and the superficiality of the social circle that surrounds Tom and Myrtle, where art is reduced to a topic of idle conversation rather than a source of genuine meaning.

Narrative Role and Thematic Resonance

McKee's photographs serve a subtle but significant narrative function in The Great Gatsby. They are part of the novel's broader critique of the Jazz Age's obsession with appearances and social climbing. McKee, like many of the minor characters, is a figure of aspiration without substance, his "artistic game" a hollow claim to culture. The mention of Montauk Point—The Gulls also contributes to the novel's recurring imagery of the sea and the shore, which elsewhere carries profound symbolic weight—from the green light at the end of Daisy's dock to the final image of Gatsby's dream receding into the "dark fields of the republic." In contrast, McKee's seascapes are trivial, a reminder of how easily beauty and ambition can be coarsened by the very people who claim to appreciate them. The photograph, like the party itself, is a fleeting, forgettable artifact of a world that values style over substance, and its brief appearance underscores the novel's elegiac meditation on the failure of dreams.