In the passage Eighner professes scavenging as a sound and honorable niche, he demonstrates this by giving by giving specific examples as how it is both sound and honorable. The author explains that scavengers have honor that sets up boundaries that should not be crossed , such as spreading litter and going through personal trash cans. Eighner also connects scavenging to honor by calling it as “a modern form of self reliance” this paints scavenging as a positive and honorable practice. The author describes a system he uses to determine whether food is safe or not in which he takes several precautions and always keeps this question in mind “why was this discarded?” this meticulous process shows how he is sound about his practice of dumpster diving. Throughout the story Eighner gives many details about his life of scavenging that help to support his claim that his practice is both honorable and
In the past decades, the booming housing market has caused the prices of real estate to dramatically increase causing the issue of homelessness to be on the rise. Many people who do live on the streets, resort to dumpster diving and finding trash to call theirs. In his article: "On Dumpster Diving" Lars Eighner, goes into depth about his experiences while dumpster diving. Eighner found many items in the dumpster that were still edible or somewhat useful. He began diving a year before he became homeless and has continued while he wrote his piece of work (Eighner 673). Eighner enlightens us with many instances of his journey dumpster diving while he was homeless.
Specifically, the grandfather in this poem appears to represent involvement with nature because of his decisions to garden as he “stabs his shears into earth” (line 4). However, he is also representative of urban life too as he “watched the neighborhood” from “a three-story” building (line 10). The author describes the world, which the grandfather has a small “paradise” in, apart from the elements desecrated by humans, which include “a trampled box of Cornflakes,” a “craggy mound of chips,” and “greasy / bags of takeouts” (lines 23, 17, 2, and 14-15). The passive nature of the grandfather’s watching over the neighborhood can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, most of them aligning with the positive versus negative binary created by the authors of these texts. The author wants to show the reader that, through the grandfather’s complexity of character, a man involved in both nature and more human centered ways of life, there is multifaceted relationship that man and nature share. Through the also violent descriptions of the grandfather’s methods of gardening, the connection between destructive human activities and the negative effects on nature is
There are plenty of articles that discuss in great detail the conditions and many aspects of dumpster diving, but there is a fundamental difference between diving for survival and diving for profit. Lars Eighner, the author of “On Dumpster Diving”, tells stories of multiple instances of his dumpster diving experience. Eighner also explains exactly what it’s like to be homeless and to rely on scavenging through garbage to survive in order to get your next meal. On the other hand, in the article “Dumpster Divers: Scavenging is About More Than the Trash” by Elana Dure, she discusses that dumpster divers believe to think they are scavenging for treasure, not just for pleasure and enjoyment, but for profit. Both are “making a living”, but one group
“Greg sat in the small, pale green kitchen listening, knowing the lecture would end with his father saying he couldn’t play ball with the Scorpions.” This made Greg very sad, causing him to go for a walk when he broke into the house where he met Lemond Brown and he encountered some new things such as the neighborhood thugs. “They banged around noisily, calling for the rag man. “We heard you talking about your treasure.” The voice slurred.
Step 3: 1. Eighner introduces his arguments through the use of narrative stories and his own personal experiences. He uses this technique to let the reader see firsthand how some people are able to survive off what is carelessly thrown away by others who take what they own for granted. Eighner illustrates this point on page 1, “The necessities of daily life I began to extract from Dumpsters. Yes, we ate from Dumpsters. Except for jeans, all my clothes can from Dumpsters. Boom boxes, candles, bedding, toilet paper, medicine, books, a typewriter… I acquired many things from the Dumpsters.”
Unger’s main example, titled The Envelope, is a case that forces the reader to re-evaluate their initial reactions when compared to other examples such as The Vintage Sedan. In the case of The Envelope, a person, who is not financially well off, receives a letter in the mail from UNICEF asking for one hundred dollars that will go to save thirty children in poorer nations. Instead of putting a minimal amount of energy and resources into writing the cheque, they choose to disregard it and throw it in the trash (25). In The Vintage Sedan, a person has just recently restored a classic luxury sedan that they can only barely afford. This person encounters a wounded man on the road who caused the injury himself by recklessly trespassing over barbed wire fencing. Now the owner of the sedan is faced with ...
The author, Lars Eighner explains in his informative narrative, “On Dumpster Diving” the lifestyle of living out of a dumpster. Eighner describes the necessary steps to effectively scavenge through dumpsters based on his own anecdotes as he began dumpster diving a year before he became homeless. The lessons he learned from being a dumpster diver was in being complacent to only grab what he needs and not what he wants, because in the end all those things will go to waste. Eighner shares his ideas mainly towards two direct audiences. One of them is directed to people who are dumpster divers themselves, and the other, to individuals who are unaware of how much trash we throw away and waste. However, the author does more than direct how much trash
Lars Eighner uses the appeal of ethos the most prominently in his book to prove he is credible, followed by an appeal logos by applying logic and pathos using stories.
He starts by giving a lot of personal examples (Pizza shop example), then talks about other people who try it (The stages of beginning to dumpster dive), and explains how dumpster diving is a lot better than the more accepted picking up of cans (comparison to a wino). He then delves into the ethics behind dumpster diving (looking at prescription bottles and such), and then if one, presumably the reader, wanted to try it how they would do so (pole with hook on it). He ends with some deep insights into dumpster diving and his way of life. I think that the way he organizes his essay, and his overall tone, are to convince the reader that dumpster diving is not as bad as everyone things, and to make people actually interested in trying it. He first
Didion and Eighner have different styles of writing, but they both created writings with an instructional component. In both pieces of literature, they guide the audience like a mother to child, guiding us step by step in order to perfect the outcome. Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook” teaches the reader on how to keep note of the past through a notebook. “On Dumpster Diving” written by Lars Eighner, teaches the reader how to successfully dumpster dive and survive. However, Eighner’s piece included many details, whereas Didion’s ideas used examples by flowing from one top to another. It could also be said that Lars Eighner’s piece creates a more thorough analysis on how to dumpster dive. In spite of the fact that the pieces of literature
According to Mayberry (2009) Lars Eighner, a graduate of the University of Texas, became homeless in 1988 and again in 1995 (p. 351). Some of the accounts from Travels with Lisbeth (1993), a book by Lars Eighner, depicted what he went through and what he found during his homeless state. A homeless person must eat and sleep but may not know where or when this might happen next. The human will to survive enabled Eighner to eat food from a dumpster, reach out to other for handouts, and sleep in places other than a bed with covers.
Homelessness is increasing every year and effecting Americans of different age, ethnicity and religion. In Lars Eighner “On Dumpster Diving” he explains what he went through while being homeless. He describes how and what foods someone should be looking for and to always be conscious of what one is eating because there is always a reason why something has been thrown out. He continues to go into detail about other items that can be found in the dumpster like sheets to sleep on and pieces of paper to write on. Things that can keep him busy through the day. Eighner carefully explains to his readers how being a dumpster diver has become a life style for the homeless and this is how they survive. It’s a way of living and they are comfortable doing it. “I began dumpster diving about a year before I became homeless” (Eighner 713). He tries to bring us into the world of being homeless. It is hard to imagine what it would be like in that situation, and how could surviving as a dumpster diver be a way of survival? As a dumpster diver, Eighner is able to tell us what is ok to eat and have and what is not ok for your health. His essay starts by uttering some guidelines of what is and is not safe to eat. “Eating safely from the dumpsters involves three principles: using common sense for evaluating the food, knowing the dumpsters of the given areas and always ask, “Why was this discarded?” (Eighner 714).
environment, exhibit an unethical social view of human morality, and invoke a new means of
Lars Eighner uses the appeal of ethos the most prominently in his book to prove he is credible, followed by an appeal logos by applying logic and pathos using stories.
On the most superficial level, the verbal fragments in The Waste Land emphasize the fragmented condition of the world the poem describes. Partly because it was written in the aftermath of World War I, at a time when Europeans’ sense of security as well as the land itself was in shambles, the poem conveys a sense of disillusionment, confusion, and even despair. The poem’s disjointed structure expresses these emotions better than the rigidity and clarity of more orthodox writing. This is evinced by the following from the section "The Burial of the Dead":