DINA ODUM
Professor Moskowitz
ENGLISH 121 ESSAY 3
11/5/2014

Thesis and Support: “On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner

Lars Eighners essay “On Dumpster Diving” describes the lifestyle of living out of a dumpster. Lars demonstrates that anyone can achieve a fulfilling life without the constraints of society and material wealth. He finds nearly everything he needs and sometimes more just from the refuse of others. Firstly, what is dumpster diving? Dumpster diving is the practice of sifting through commercial or residential waste in order to obtain items one might find useful that have been discarded by their owners. Dumpster diving is largely associated with the homeless or people with little or no source of income. In January 2013, 610,042 …show more content…

Several times, Eighner wrote on his contempt for “Can Scroungers” (Paragraphs 42-46). He describes can scroungers as those dumpster divers who need to have small amounts of cash to sustain their drug or alcohol habits. They go through dumpsters without an open mind and only focused on one thing, finding cans to sell or barter, often times destroying perfectly good items in the process. Eighner clearly disapproved of this behavior because it is wasteful and leads to situations like littering which causes the general public to be less accepting of the divers.
From the tone of the essay and the way he talked about himself and on occasion todays college students, Eighner came across as proud and even a bit condescending. In paragraphs 13-14, Eighner talks on how his companions often come to him to judge the status of certain foods. While he has no problems helping them, he remarks that they should be able to do this by themselves as he has no special knowledge. The author also talked multiple times on college students and while he is clearly appreciative of their reckless habits of tossing good items out, he makes them out to not be as informed as they should be. In Paragraph 22, he says many students don’t know and don’t care to know because they aren’t spending their own but “Daddy’s Money”.
Finally and perhaps most surprising is Eighners sense of morality. You would think that someone who lives of the cast