In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the quality of life in America during the 1920s. He writes about Jay Gatsby, a character who lives a wealthy life in West Egg, Long Island. Throughout the novel, the author develops Gatsby's life and ends it with a premature death. By Gatsby's death, the author shows the reader that the life he illustrates through Jay Gatsby is not the way one should live, hence creating Gatsby as a cautionary character.  According to Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is a cautionary character because he valued unimportant things such as money and futile obsessions more than life's important aspects such as morality and self-growth.

For starters, Jay Gatsby gained his wealth in a shady way.  This impression is given when Nick and Jay have lunch with Meyer Wolfshiem.  Wolfshiem, a questionable character who is said to have fixed the 1919 World Series, says to Nick, "I understand you’re looking for a business gonnegtion," while they were discussing how many people were electrocuted for the murder of Wolfshiem's friend.  Immediately after, Nick says that "the juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling," meaning that Wolfshiem's business has a connection to crimes of that sort. Afterwards, we learn that Gatsby is involved in business with Wolfshiem because he tells Wolshiem that they would discuss business another time.  This is a hint that the business Wolfshiem offers is not fully moral and that Gatsby, who did business with Wolfshiem, was indeed involved in immoral money-making.  Through this, Fitzgerald illustrates that while Gatsby was determined to achieve a goal, he sacrificed other values to do so.  This shows how Gatsby compromised his morality, an important value that society depends on, for monetary gain.

Additionally, Gatsby became fixated on a green light that represented his lost love because he failed to see that his ideals were in the past; this kept him from moving on with his life and developing personally as well as socially.  Gatsby looked for Daisy's green light on her dock each night and tells Daisy, "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock."  At the end of the novel, when Nick described Gatsby as he approached his unfortunate fate, he used this green light to represent how Gatsby yearned for an impossible goal that only moved further and further away. However, Gatsby continued to yearn for it.  Since Gatsby stayed stuck on this one point of his life, he couldn't move on or grow in any other way.  The author writes that Gatsby "paid a high price for living too long with a single dream," hinting that this trait contributed to Gatsby's fate and warning that this trait is dangerous.

Consequently, Gatsby suffered an untimely death-- the people present "heard the shots," and saw "a thin red circle in the water [of his pool]."  He left behind all his money and didn't have love, happiness, family, or even people to attend his funeral.  Fitzgerald used this ending to show the consequence of living like Gatsby did. In a way, Gatsby's death can be attributed to his obsession with Daisy because it was the reason he got drawn into the entanglement involving George Wilson, his murderer.  He also didn't end up with Daisy which shows that his approach to working for a goal was not successful.  By giving Gatsby an unfortunate ending and not making him accomplish his goal with Daisy, Fitzgerald proves that Gatsby is a cautionary character.

In conclusion, the author exhibits Gatsby's flaws throughout the novel to make Gatsby’s character cautionary. His integrity and morality were compromised and he still never achieved his goal of being with Daisy.  The rigid ideals that controlled his obsessions hindered his development as a person and resulted in an early death.  This unfortunate ending that resulted from Gatsby having the wrong values in life proves that Jay Gatsby is a cautionary character according to Fitzgerald.