The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

…I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands (38).

This sentence onto the end of the chapter feels disjointed from the rest of the chapter. The ellipsis suggests that he did not include the ride to Mr. McKee’s house. The sentence before it presents the two men in an elevator together. Then, the next reveals that Nick went into McKee’s house to see his portfolio. Why Mr. McKee has to be only in his underwear is a mystery. When I first read this, I thought that Nick Caraway was too drunk to remember, but then I thought differently. He told the story coherently up to this point. I think that Mr. McKee’s little fiasco is not important to the main purpose of the novel. He did not need find it necessary to place a minute detail into the work if Mr. McKee was not going to make another appearance, especially if the man ended up only clad in his underwear. Nick left him his dignity by not giving detail about the walk down to McKee’s house.