Preview

Lars Eighner: on Dumpster Diving Essay Example

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
359 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Lars Eighner: on Dumpster Diving Essay Example
Marc Riner
Professor Martin
English 1301
12 July 2011
On On Dumpster Diving by Lars Eighner The world is full of funny things doing things to certain beings that sometimes seem to not be very funny. Life has a way of forcing a man to see particular phenomena through other men’s eyes. Sometimes that “other” is the one type of person you knew you would never be, or at least you thought you did.
A Mr. Lars Eighner, born in Texas, raised in Texas, had the upbringing of a success. Having attended Lamar High School and studied at the University of Texas, his future looked extremely bright, but unfortunately something funny meandered across his path. He lost his job, and so he and his dog set out in search for whatever they may find.
The essay by Eighner is “On Dumpster Diving” and it goes into depth on just that topic. He begins his narration with an examination of the origins of the word “dumpster”. Having come from the company Dempsey Dumpster, the word was randomly chosen as the word to describe the massive steel cubes parked outside of any establishment you see today (Eighner). He then goes on to give his preference on what he likes to call the process of dumpster diving, in which case, he calls it scavenging. After clearing this up, Lars goes into how to scavenge correctly and what to do and not do. He summarizes this whole section by saying that it comes to the person and whether they will put the food in their mouth or not. From reading, one can see that Mr. Eighner and his dog have a very close relationship and it is quite symbiotic because the dog tends to steer him from ants and peculiar dumpsters towards the areas with better potential (Eighner). He brings all his points into a nice little conclusion by comparing himself and his occupation with the wealthy and points out that there is very little difference between the two.

Works Cited
Eighner, Lars. “On Dumpster

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Eighner's essay is more "how to" as opposed to Stegner's memoir. In the essay he coaches the reader on how to survive by living out of dumpsters. He moves smoothly through a variety of topics such as what is safe to eat and drink, the stages a person goes experiences when "scavenging," different types of "dumpster divers," and personal past experiences. From these things, Eighner claims to have learned two lessons: one being that you should only take what you need and nothing else. In other words, if it is not useful, it has no value. The second lesson is the idea of materialism and how he finds that memories and sentiments last longer than objects. This lesson is differs greatly compared to "The Town Dump" because Stegner treasures the items found in the dump, while Eighner would have left the junk and remembered their…

    • 571 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When I originally saw the title of the article, I immediately had an idea that the selection was going to be a sob story about how someone became a dumpster diver. To my surprise, there was so much more to this than I thought. Lars Eighner, to me, had a sense of adventure to “scavenging”. It was fascinating to him to “acquire many things from the dumpsters.” He categorized things in an advanced system that reminded me of a computer filing system. No matter how sophisticated a system is, there is always an error. No matter how careful Eighner was he would “contract dysentery at least once a month.” If the categories were not enough, he implicated different sectors society for being overly wasteful. He implicates college students for wasting…

    • 268 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    After reading “On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eigner, I found out a lot of new things including how people on this earth manage to live. In the beginning of the essay, there has been some information provided to us about the writer which states that he lived in Austin and was a student of University of Texas. He described how life was on streets and showed us his interest towards dumpsters. He used description in the beginning and explains about term ‘Dumpster’. His tone is basically descriptive in the opening. Slowly he becomes like an escort in explaining dumpster diving. The author discovers new things about dumpsters. I think he wants to show the readers, the life of dumpster divers. Usage of words like scavenging and scrounging makes us think…

    • 254 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The young Sartoris Snopes, otherwise known as Sarty, is introduced to us in William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" as a young boy who is faced with a few issues in his life. He comes from blood that is very poverty-ridden and lives with a father who is an abusive criminal. The family is forced to move from county to county due to his father's obsession with burning barns belonging to employers that angered him. Sarty knew this was wrong and was faced with betraying his father and his blood. In his young life, he was taught the wrong way to live in a society, yet he still has second thoughts about what his father did, simply because he was is father. The fear of retribution, being at such a young age and witnessing crimes, and his father dealing with families of higher social class, leaves Sarty very confused about his father's actions, which has Sarty reacting differently to each incident throughout the story.…

    • 1217 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lars Eighner states, “I began Dumpster diving about a year before I became homeless.” (Page 107). through this quote, we know that Eighner undoubtedly has had experience on the experience of Dumpster diving. through the essay, he speaks from his own personal experiences and views about society. “I have learned much as a scavenger. I mean to put some of what I have learned down here, beginning with the practical art of Dumpster diving and proceeding to the abstract.” (Page108). And by “abstract”, Eighner simply means the ideas and thoughts that he derived from his experience as a Dumpster diver. Her later perceives the world in a new light, seeing society as materialistic, and that he himself has gone through a “transience of being materialistic”.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lars is very personable in his writing in the sense that he is humble; he wants to keep people reading so he gives them raw information. The essay isn’t sugar-coated but instead very realistic and honest about what he does. He corrects people that title what he does “foraging” and is accepting and welcomes the term “scavenging” since he lives off of other individuals. He also gets the reader involved by explaining the transition from an average mindset to one of a dumpster diver. He goes into depth about all the stages and everything that happens to a new diver psychologically. He explains that the working man who brags about a find is not the same as the “professional” diver. With this he shares that he is experienced in what he does so that he evidently can state “People do throw away perfectly good stuff, a lot of perfectly good stuff.”…

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In "Dumpster Diving", Eighner tells his story of living off of the food that he finds in the…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most photographers’ pictures depict real life things or events. However, Jerry Uelsmann’s pictures depict fantasies. He creates imaginary worlds in his photographs; places people can only dream of. He uses his photographs to get people to look beyond what they see.…

    • 618 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dumpster Diving Essay

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Considering that Eighner has spent a majority of his life depending on dumpsters to survive, he is almost grateful for them, and finds value in what they hold. In this passage, Eighner uses imagery to describe discarded items that he considers necessities “The necessities of daily life I began to extract from dumpsters. Yes, we ate from them. Except for jeans, all my clothes came from dumpsters.” Since dumpsters clothe and feed him, the items inside become more valuable to Eighner. He explains that although the things found in a dumpster are thrown away, does not mean they are entirely invaluable “Dumpsters are full of things of some potential value to someone,” Others may not see an importance in discarded food or clothing, but some, like Eighner,…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dumpster Diving

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Eighner states that while he was dumpster diving, which he likes to call scavenging, he believes that college students throws away the best things, around breaks they usually throw stuff away because they don’t know if it is spoiled or not. He states that since it is “Daddy’s Money” they don’t think about throwing it away. The author stays on topic throughout this paragraph. Although I do not agree, he does make some good points. Usually most college students don’t have a lot of money to just throw away money or food. Some students don’t care and throw things away and be wasteful.…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    There are two jobs that no children ever want to do when they grow up. Not one child tells their parents, ‘I want to be a gleaner when I grow up,' or ‘I want to be a dumpster diver.' Every child grows up thinking they are going to be a doctor or an astronaut when they get their parents age and they are going to be rich. Wouldn't there be something wrong with a kid who wanted to be something other than the best? As I have read more about dumpster diving and gleaning, I have began to wonder if it is really that bad. Why shouldn't a child want to grow up to be either the dumpster diver or the gleaner?…

    • 568 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dumpster Diving

    • 648 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In a way, Eighner tells us how wasteful we are in the world. Once I read this essay, I was convinced that we do waste a lot. It made me think of how much food we through away because it isn’t what we wanted or not cooked right. I believe we would never really see it in Eighner’s point of view until we actually have to live with or experience dumpster diving. Although the essay was telling the audience about his experience of dumpster diving, he managed to completely avoid the emotional side of it. It kind of seems as though he was giving the reader the basic tools needed to use for dumpster diving. In a weird way Eighner seems to be talking to two different sets of people. He addressed people who were already exercising dumpster diving living and people who were wondering what it would feel like to be a dumpster diver.…

    • 648 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Book Thief Essay

    • 898 Words
    • 3 Pages

    kind of power, but that power could be used for good as well as evil.…

    • 898 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wouldn’t you like to read a book where the author gives you details of his or her story in mysterious ways? Markus Zusak created a novel of a girl observed by “Death”, in the town of Mulching Germany. Zusak’s novel, “The Book Thief” included different types of literary devices like personification, metaphors and de-personification to make The Book Thief a better plot for the reader’s imagination. Even though Zusak’s novel’s novel created a world of hate it also gave a new view on how no one should judge a book by its cover.…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    It would be a great idea to start recycling more than what we already do. It will greatly help us, if we do not using as many resources to build new things, instead we could use recycled materials to build new things. It would also help with landfills from being overpacked, because lets face it all of our trash has to go somewhere. Another important thing that comes with recycling is saving the environment from more polluntants that will hurt our ecosystem.…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays