If that's the case then why aren't they making as much money? I believe the people who are successful in this world are the people who can properly deal with despair and the gravity-like effect it has on us both emotionally and physically. The first line of this quote says so much in one sentence. "My father imagined a life more satisfying than the one he managed to lead.". Clearly in this case, the person's father let the downs of his life get the best of him. Living in a place where he had to beg for work along with the rest of his town is a matter of Social Class getting in the way of him not being able to bounce back up and achieve a level of living that he wished for. If he doesn't see himself as uneducated, someone else must have that opinion of him or maybe he just doesn't reach out of his comfort zone because of where he comes from. It's a lot easier said than done to fight out of hopelessness and to strive for more than what you're handed from the beginning of your life. So many things come into play when it comes to social class such as History perhaps of the town that he lives in or maybe the race of him and the people that surround his family. .
When you look at examples of Social Class and despair such as a poor town in a city, it's a safe assumption to believe Race may also play a role in the way these people live their lives. It is beyond naive to think Race no longer effects society and the way our world works. There are two sides to the story of race in society. There's the side of oppression when it comes to companies struggling to hire half as many people of a minority for executive position than those from a Caucasian background. Then there's the absolute abuse of minorities when it comes to paying people less for equal work just because they aren't white. In his poem "Greed", Philip Schultz discusses the daily struggle for people of all ethnicities trying to find work to put food on the table for their families.