Dumpster Diving

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. In the assertion “ On Dumpster Diving” written by Lars Eighner, the author speaks about how he had to overcome his personal struggles through living by dumpster diving for everyday necessities. Most importantly, Eighner is trying to show his audience how America is being wasteful. Eighner has written a successful persuasive essay using narration and description to show his audience his approach on scalvaging through the dumpsters. Eighner suggests that dumpster diving is more beneficial than the average American would believe, because so many people are wasting perfectly good necessities.

His main point of his essay is how a person can survive with his or her limited resources.

Eighner writes a well written persuasive essay that reaches out to two types of audiences, one who find scavenging through dumpsters interesting, and one who takes advantage of our everyday necessities. Eighner tries to both persuade and inform his audience with details on dumpster diving through his own experiences when he was homeless. The essay contains evidence that engages the reader by showing us how Eighner normalizes societies assumptions about dumpster diving. Eighner explains to his audience how dumpster diving can be a full time job that requires a lot of effort but following specific rules can help someone to end up more sharpened on scavenging. “I am not here by chance; the Dumpsters in this area are very rich ” (Eighner 367) he uses the example of when he would keep an eye out for the academic school calendar to get food out of dumpsters. He learned that college kids and like many other Americans throw away food that are still fresh and has not expired yet. Another persuasive point he tries to convey is how Americans are wasteful even if their food is completely fresh. “Students throw away food around breaks because they do not know whether it has spoiled or will spoil before they return” (Eighner 367) this proves that Americans waste food because they think it will go bad after the expiration date. This might inform the reader that young people do not understand the world around them and how young people waste resources that may be valuable to others.

Eighner uses narration and description as his method of development. Narration leads a big part in this essay because Eighner is telling us what he personally experiences when he was homeless and scavenging. “I tend to eat as if I have no idea where my next meal is coming from.” (Eighner 370) the author personally didn’t know when the next time he was going to eat. So, he used that example to show his audience his struggle of finding food in the dumpsters. To allow his audience to get more personal with him he would use description to describe the different types of things he would find in the dumpsters. For example he found different varieties of love letters, medicine bottle, clothes, shoes, food, that each belonged to somebody that had no use to it anymore. “ … : people throw away perfectly good stuff, a lot of perfectly good stuff.” (Eighner 370) this shows the reader that people don’t see the value of things when someone might.

Lars Eighner was successful in making the point of proving the world is a waste life place. He went into detail about the things he would find while dumpster diving. He also used the items that he found to prove his point like dry crackers, fresh pizza, and half pint peanut butter ect. Eighner is very dedicated when he talks about his life as a scavenger and how it has taught many lessons that may be useful in life.

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