Leslie McKee Character Analysis

McKee is a former cattle rancher in Moab who now cobbles together a living with low-paying side jobs. Kind-hearted an entrepreneurial, McKee appears in a few brief mentions to illustrate Abbey’s political argument about the disappearance of cowboy culture. Along with the cattle rancher Roy Scobie, McKee is portrayed as a casualty of the new industrial order, where mechanized cattle farming has made the slow and independent cowboy lifestyle obsolete. In his youth, McKee operated a bootleg bus line, with buses that had to be literally pushed along the unpaved roads. He also took on demeaning work as an extra in Hollywood cowboy movies, once getting hit in the eye with a rubber arrow. These details illustrate how demeaning and difficult it’s become to sustain the freedom of the cowboy lifestyle. McKee’s hardships are particularly sad, since he’s such a decent person—one of the area’s hard-working and hospitable Mormons. Illustrating this goodwill, McKee’s well-meaning wife has ritualistically bound Abbey’s soul to her own, in order to save the unbelieving Abbey from hell.