Rich v. Poor Power Struggle in Grape of Wrath

The history and present condition of California in Grapes of Wrath seems to be a power struggle between the poor and rich people in the state. The rich people always seem to have the more power because of their money, but the poor people always have them outnumbered in manpower and in desire. The poor people are driven by their desire to simply keep their families alive, and they are willing to work or revolt or do whatever they have to do it. The rich people are simply driven by their fear of losing their wealth to these poor people.

Way back in the day California was owned by the Mexicans, but it was farmed by American squatters. Because they farmed the land and were the ones who kept it, they felt as though they deserved to be the owners rather than the Mexicans. Therefore they took control of the land and passed it down to generations of their descendancts. The descendants that the land was passed to are the landowners who now own huge, exorbitant amounts of land that they do not need and pay workers incredibly low wages in order to keep their wealth alive. Now they have become the people who own the land but do not work on it themselves and are surrounded by people who do work the land and think that because of this is it their right to own the land instead. In a sense the country has come full circle because history is repeating itself, only this time the descendants of the poor farmers are now the rich tycoons who are not doing any of the work and gleaning all of the profit. And so the power struggle goes on between the hard-working, honest poor and the powerful, greedy rich who could stop all of the struggle and poverty if they were simply selfless enough to actually pay decent and fair wages to the people and stop throwing the weight of their money around as though they are better than the poor just because they were born into wealthy families and increased their wealth by being dishonest.