On Dumpster Diving By Lars Eighner

Poverty can be defined in many ways. Some consider it an issue caused by the lack of ambition in certain individuals. On the other hand, many also consider it to be an issue caused by outside forces such as class, education, and economic conditions. Essays by Lars Eighner, Anna Quindlen, and Jonathan Kozol all touch base on poverty and what it means to be in poverty. Lars Eighner’s essay “On Dumpster Diving” comes from the perspective of a third year college dropout who started dumpster diving approximately twelve months prior to becoming homeless (citation). Almost acting as a how-to-guide on dumpster diving, Eighner gives potentially the most valuable diving tip in his essay; who throws away the most valuable things. “Students throw out many good things” (citation). He goes on to further describe his statement. “Since it is Daddy’s money”, students often discard valuable things due to “carelessness, ignorance, or wastefulness” (citation). In Anna Quindlen’s essay “Homeless”, the college graduate interviews a homeless woman named Ann that she met in a bus terminal for a story on the homeless she was currently doing (citation). The woman said that “she was just passing through” before showing her a picture of a house, indicating to Anna that “she was somebody”

I knew that I was poor, of course, but poverty, to me, had a much different definition than what it actually was. I imagined poverty to be a living state like the people in the three essays summarized earlier experienced or saw, not what I was living in. I never saw it as a bad thing because I never lived in anything different. A large portion of my life was without health or dental insurance and I was often clothed with hand-me-downs from my brother. We didn’t and still don’t have much food and do occasionally go to bed hungry, but we have never gone a day without eating something, whether it be cans of tuna or peanut butter and jelly