Montauk Point—The Sea

Montauk Point—The Sea is a photographic study by Chester McKee, a minor character in The Great Gatsby, representing the artist's attempt to capture the stark natural beauty of Long Island's eastern tip. The work is mentioned during the tense party at Myrtle Wilson's New York apartment, where McKee, a pale, feminine man who works in the "artistic game," presents his portfolio to Tom Buchanan and Nick Carraway. Alongside its companion piece, Montauk Point—The Gulls, the photograph serves as a marker of McKee's pretensions to artistic seriousness and his desire for social and professional advancement through connections with the wealthy. The image stands in ironic contrast to the moral and emotional desolation of the Valley of Ashes and the corrupt, careless world of the novel's elite, functioning as a symbol of the commodification of art and the failure of aesthetic beauty to redeem or elevate a degraded society.

Context and Introduction

Chester McKee is introduced as a pale, feminine man from the flat below Myrtle Wilson's apartment, who has just shaved, leaving a white spot of lather on his cheekbone. He informs Nick Carraway that he is in the "artistic game," and it is later revealed that he is a photographer who made the dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson's mother that hovers like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife, Mrs. McKee, is shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible, and she tells Nick with pride that her husband has photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they have been married. McKee's artistic ambitions are modest and derivative, and his work is presented not as a genuine creative expression but as a social prop and a means of ingratiating himself with the wealthy and powerful.

The Photograph and Its Companion

During the party at Myrtle's apartment, McKee asserts that he has "done some nice things out on Long Island," and when Tom Buchanan looks at him blankly, McKee specifies that two of them are framed downstairs. He names them: one is called Montauk Point—The Gulls, and the other is Montauk Point—The Sea. The titles suggest a focus on the rugged, windswept landscape of Montauk Point, the easternmost tip of Long Island, a place of natural grandeur and isolation. The choice of subject matter—gulls and the sea—implies an attempt to capture elemental, timeless beauty, but the context of the party, with its drunkenness, violence, and moral squalor, undercuts any pretension to artistic seriousness. The photographs are never seen by the reader, and their aesthetic quality is left entirely to the imagination, making them function more as a symbol of McKee's aspirations than as actual works of art.

Narrative Role and Thematic Significance

McKee's photographs serve as a minor but telling detail in the novel's critique of the Jazz Age's superficiality and commodification of culture. McKee's desire to "do more work on Long Island, if I could get the entry" reveals that his art is a tool for social climbing, not a pursuit of beauty or truth. He asks Tom for a letter of introduction to Myrtle's husband, George Wilson, so he can do "some studies of him," a proposal that Tom mockingly transforms into "George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump." The photographs, like the party itself, are part of a world where everything—art, relationships, even human life—is reduced to a transaction. The stark contrast between the natural beauty of Montauk Point and the artificial, degraded environment of the apartment and the Valley of Ashes underscores the novel's central theme: the corruption of the American Dream and the impossibility of escaping the moral and social decay that wealth and carelessness have wrought. The image of the sea, a symbol of timelessness and renewal, is reduced to a commodity, a piece of decor in a world that has lost its capacity for genuine wonder or redemption.