So here in Chapter Four we see Amory respect but not quite get Burne's anachronistic quest for truth, fall in love with his incisive damsel who doesn't seem to be in distress third cousin, and prepare to go off to war.
As I read, what I thought about was this question: What does Amory want? What does he long for? And despite his not-so-ingratiating character, my working hypothesis is this: He wants to succeed, but he's only capable of being driven to succed if he believes that his idea of success is true. And I think what's happened to him along the way is that he's begun to doubt his previous notions of what success truly is.
When he was younger, it was all about social conquest. He neglects his studies because he's beginning to achieve the thingns he thought marked true success and finds them to be vapid. But then, of course, he's left afloat. That's why he's so enamored of people who have goals backed by some sort of moral compass, such as Burne and the war or cousin Clara and her kids.
As Clara psycho-analyzes Amory: "This has nothing to do with will-power... you lack judgment -- the judgment to decide at once when you know your imagination will play you false, given half a chance."
In your last post you noted how the character seems to be Fitzgerald, and yet the author seems to be going out of his way to make his protagonist un-likeable. But perhaps Amory is unlikeable simply because the book itself is the latest chapter in Fitzgerald's internal questioning. Maybe he's even bitter about the choices he made following what he thought to be meaningful fulfillment, and he has failed to find them, and thus he's a bit angry in the book.
Both Amory and presumably Fitzgerald had no problem mustering willpower when they needed it. To someone born into their shoes, a certain amount of willpower is all it takes to reach society's level of success. But judgment, wisdom, is tougher to attain.
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