Dumpster Diving
Dumpster Diving
Lars Eighner is an experienced dumpster diver or as he prefers to call it “scavenging.” He writes “On Dumpster Diving” an essay about the three years he spent on the streets accompanied by his lone companion, dog Lizabeth. Born in Texas in 1948, Eighner began dumpster diving one year before he ended up homeless after being unable to pay for his rent. Diving through dumpsters to obtain life’s main necessities, Eighner becomes a veteran at realizing what foods are safe and what items can be useful if kept. One of the most important aspects of trying to persuade readers is to use the appropriate tone according to the situation. The calm tone that Eighner uses doesn’t strengthen his argument, but with his knowledge of dumpster diving, he ultimately persuade readers that people living in modernized parts of the world have wasteful habits. By reading the essay, I am convinced of his argument about wasteful people being very common.
Eighner approaches the topic of dumpster diving with a very calm tone. The tone he uses does not allow the reader to connect with him and feel what he was feeling when he was homeless. If the essay had a more emotional tone it would leave the reader with amore sympathetic view regarding the topic of dumpster diving. For instance, he believes that the term dumpster diving is “a little too cute.”(p.147) Usually, when a person thinks of the term dumpster diving, they feel sympathy towards the individual who is led to scrounge through a dumpster for means of survival. Hence, this essay would be a lot more intriguing if he expressed his emotions because readers would feel empathetic towards him and this challenging chapter of his life. His calm tone alludes to the fact that dumpster diving is his lifestyle, something that he did everyday for four years. A person reading this may not completely understand because they did not have the experiences he did.
Eighner uses his personal experiences of hardship to convince readers of
Lars Eighner is an experienced dumpster diver or as he prefers to call it “scavenging.” He writes “On Dumpster Diving” an essay about the three years he spent on the streets accompanied by his lone companion, dog Lizabeth. Born in Texas in 1948, Eighner began dumpster diving one year before he ended up homeless after being unable to pay for his rent. Diving through dumpsters to obtain life’s main necessities, Eighner becomes a veteran at realizing what foods are safe and what items can be useful if kept. One of the most important aspects of trying to persuade readers is to use the appropriate tone according to the situation. The calm tone that Eighner uses doesn’t strengthen his argument, but with his knowledge of dumpster diving, he ultimately persuade readers that people living in modernized parts of the world have wasteful habits. By reading the essay, I am convinced of his argument about wasteful people being very common.
Eighner approaches the topic of dumpster diving with a very calm tone. The tone he uses does not allow the reader to connect with him and feel what he was feeling when he was homeless. If the essay had a more emotional tone it would leave the reader with amore sympathetic view regarding the topic of dumpster diving. For instance, he believes that the term dumpster diving is “a little too cute.”(p.147) Usually, when a person thinks of the term dumpster diving, they feel sympathy towards the individual who is led to scrounge through a dumpster for means of survival. Hence, this essay would be a lot more intriguing if he expressed his emotions because readers would feel empathetic towards him and this challenging chapter of his life. His calm tone alludes to the fact that dumpster diving is his lifestyle, something that he did everyday for four years. A person reading this may not completely understand because they did not have the experiences he did.
Eighner uses his personal experiences of hardship to convince readers of
References: Eighner, Lars. On Dumpster Diving. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin 's, 2011.