To support the idea with quotations from the novel, you
will need to provide some context, I think. For instance, in Chapter VII Myrtle Wilson
is killed on the road. Gatsby drives Daisy home, but he does not leave. He stands
outside on the lawn, watching over Daisy, who is inside having a quiet supper with her
husband. When Nick encounters him, Gatsby says he will stay all night if necessary to
"protect" Daisy. Nick sees Tom and Daisy through a window and observes that they are
sitting close together, no conflict between them. At the end of the chapter, Nick says
this of Gatsby:
He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned
back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness
of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight--watching
over nothing.
The passage
makes it clear that all of Gatsby's wealth will not give him the one thing he wants
most: Daisy. She remains with Tom, by choice, while Gatsby stands outside alone in the
dark. His money will not buy his way into her life.
A
passage in the conclusion of the novel is also significant in supporting the idea that
money will not buy happiness:
He [Gatsby] had come a long way to this blue lawn
and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did
not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond
the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the
night.
Gatsby had indeed come
a long way, raising himself out of poverty as a boy growing up in North Dakota. He had
built a great fortune, bought a huge mansion, and acquired every material possession he
desired. However, his money did not fulfill his dream. He did not find happiness because
Daisy remained beyond his reach. His dream was "behind him," back in North Dakota; no
amount of money would change the circumstances of his birth; no amount of money would
make him acceptable in Daisy's upper class world of inherited wealth. He had come "a
long way," but happiness remained just out of his reach. Again, he could not buy what he
most wanted; he could not buy his dream.
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