Lars Eighner: The Scavenger Life

The Scavenger Life
Essayist, Lars Eighner, in his prize-winning essay, "On Dumpster Diving," discusses his experience as a homeless person. Eighner's purpose is to convey the idea that society needs to be less materialistic and place emphasis on items with "sentimental value" (387). He wants society to not get caught up in materials and live life to the fullest. Eighner creates an informative and educated tone to convince readers that dumpster diving is a honest, not greedy or selfish, "modern form of self-reliance" (386).
Eighner begins his essay by stating that he "began Dumpster diving about a year before [he] became homeless," showing that he has ample knowledge on this practice of scavenging. He talks about how scavenging is a "niche,"

even though he prefers a more comfortable consumer lifestyle (378). He describes the process of choosing food to eat which involves three principles: using common sense, knowing the Dumpsters, and answering the question, "Why was this discarded?" (379). Eighner points out how wasteful society can be when he states that "college students throw out many good things, including food" (380). He even uses humor to connect to the audience and strengthen the satire by including "Daddy's money," in reference to the students wasting food (381). It is funny that the spoiled college students could not tell if food was spoiled or not. The use of irony not only magnifies the image of people throwing away perfectly good materials, but it also proves that the wasteful nature of humans is almost degrading the exemplary ideals of society.
Through experience and observations, Eighner emphasizes on the stages Dumpster divers must go through in order to become successful. During the first stage, the "new scavenger" is "filled with disgust and self-loathing" (382). In the second stage, the scavenger begins to understand that "people do throw away perfectly good stuff," and "their shyness begins dissipate"(382). This practice of scavenging then turns into an obsession since they try to "acquire everything they touch" (382). Divers have to then restrict theirselves to items with true value. This exhibits his belief on how materials are not as important as the thoughts behind them. The necessities of life include items that have true value to the individual. As society gets caught up in buying excessive materials, they just continue to throw them away. To some, an item has no value, but to others, it does. Society has to be considerate of other people, including the poor, to be efficient and successful.
Eighner proceeds to the "abstract" part of the paper (379).

He focuses on what he has learned from the practice of scavenging. He elaborates on two deep lessons he has learned through his experience. The first lesson is that society should only take things that are valuable to them and "let the rest go by" (386). The second lesson involves "the transience of material being," meaning that materialistic objects are not as significant compared to the thoughts behind them. This again strengthens Eighner's message about how the values in the objects are what matters.
This essay's structure is based on the quote "beginning with the practical art of Dumpster diving and presiding to the abstract" (379). Eighner begins with an informative tone to explain the foods to eat and avoid, the stages Dumpster divers go through, and label the places where divers are most successful. The "abstract" part of the quote talks about the ideas and thoughts he gathered from his experiences as a homeless person. This satire on people's wastefulness transitions into a more critical tone when he critiques society for their obsession for materialistic objects and their wasteful nature.
In "On Dumpster Diving," Eighner is delivering the message that society needs to only depend on items that, to them, express certain value, and to clarify that Dumpster diving is a way of life, not an immoral, greedy practice. Eighner wants readers to not only have respect for the poor, but to strive for efficiency by being less

wasteful.