It is in Chapter Eight that you need to look to find the
answer to this question. Of course, we are left to infer Nick's motives from his
narrative, and yet the central reason why Nick does not want to leave Gatsby is because
he recognises what Gatbsy is only just beginning to recognise: that Gatsby has failed in
achieving his dominant dream--to gain Daisy. Note what the text says just before Nick
tells us how reluctant he was to leave Gatsby:
The track curved and now it was going away from
the sun, which, as it sank lower, seemed to spead itself in benediction over the
vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as
if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely
for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blured eyes and he knew that he
had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best,
forever.
Nick knows how this
dream has consumed Gatsby for so many years, and how everything that he had achieved in
terms of his wealth and prestige has been aimed at the one goal of "winning" Daisy, and
thus he is immensely concerned about the impact of this destruction of dreams on Gatsby
and how he will react. This is why he does not want to leave him
alone.
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