Sunday, December 30, 2007

Lars Eighner: On Dumpster Diving


When I first saw the title of this essay I thought it was going to be a tearful devotional by some ex-homeless person who would describe their fall to homelessness then the horrible act of digging through dumpsters to find hardly edible scrapes to feed their entire family, but what I read was the exact opposite. He is no uneducated, dirty hobo, but instead an intelligent and almost scientific persona. I found that his essay took on “how to” voice; like he was giving a guide to surviving off of dumpsters. One statement that he left out was that he never tried to make us feel sorry for him or complain about his situation; he was very upbeat and scientific throughout the entire essay.

Even though Mr. Eighner was in a very tough position, being homeless in all, he took his ability step back and see his situation in a different view and was able to produce a well written recap of his time as a homeless individual. Through this view point he explained the process in which he started, perfected, and eventually gave up. Mr. Eighner used constant word choice. I interpret this as he had the same kind of words and phrases; this means he kept his same persona throughout the entire piece.

In conclusion Lars Eighner took a very informal, revolting, and utterly un-socially accepted form of food gathering and made it into a formal, matter-of-fact and interesting topic. If by some random turn of events I became homeless, I would defiantly refer to Lars Eigher’s guide to dumpster diving, let’s just hope I won’t have to.

1 comment:

poopfacemcgee said...

I like to take dumps too!