Compare Jay Gatsby and George Wilson in The Great Gatsby.

Though Jay Gatsby and George Wilson are an unlikely pair
for comparison in The Great Gatsby, they actually have several
things in common.

First, both know what it's like to be
poor.  It's true that Gatsby has left those days behind them, but he was just as poor as
George--if not more so--at the beginning of his
life.

Second, both love a woman they can't have.  A poor
Jay Gatsby loves Daisy, a woman who embodies what it means to be rich.  He had no chance
of being with her at the time they fell in love.  A poor George Wilson fell in love with
and married a poor Myrtle Wilson; however, he never really had her love.  From their
wedding day, she was discontent and dissatisfied with her husband--the one who had to
borrow his wedding suit.  Wilson had no chance to win her love unless he made money,
which he didn't.

Third, both suffered heartbreak.  Gatsby's
was a lifetime of yearning and longing for Daisy, followed by a short interlude of love
with her, and ending with a tragic denial of the love he thought they shared.  Wilson's
was a kind of ignorance that Myrtle was so unhappy, followed by the tragic discovery
that she loved someone else (or at least was with someone else), and ending with her
sensational death.

Finally, they were both victims of
Tom and Daisy Buchanan's careless lifestyle.  Each of them lost their loves as well as
their own lives to this self-absorbed pair, with various tragic moments in
between.