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The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 Outline

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After Cody’s departure, Gatsby had received a letter from his uncle Von Hindenburg who was fighting a stalemate in Europe and feared the contingencies of an American intervention. He told him that the Kaiser asked him to spy on the Americans in exchange for the “extravagant wealth of the German Empire”. Gatsby complied, not out of fear or greed, but to satisfy the tempestuous riots of his heart. He joined America’s first division, completed the training, and was placed in the sixteenth regiment. The expeditionary force was deployed from New Jersey and landed in St. Nazaire, France in the summer of 1917. The soldiers marched to the front lines where they entrenched themselves near Bathlemont and awaited the enemy. Gatsby communicated with the Germans via carrier pigeons, recording anything that might have been of tactical use. …show more content…

Gatsby trembled as he grabbed his weapon and shot aimlessly into the air, exposed to the ammunition that rushed across the battlefield. The trenches were bombarded with mortar shells and the air was filled with the intimidating sound of machine guns. He closed his eyes for a majority of the battle, afraid of the unpleasant reality that faced him. As the sun rose on the horizon, the short offensive was over and he had inexplicably survived unscathed; the soldiers had miraculously defended the line without calamitous casualties. They dwelled in the trenches for weeks after the attack, where anxiety and gangrene perniciously proliferated among the men like wildfire. The soldiers fought off the melancholic depression by shooting rats or talking about their lives back home. Gatsby, however, wrote letters to Daisy to ease his harrowing nervousness, but also fueled his incessant hopes in the process. Yet, despite their efforts, there was an unmistakable sense of ominous

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