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On Dumpster Diving
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On Dumpster Diving
GAME
Split into 4 groups
You will have 5 minutes to pick the top 3 items from this "dumpster"
Then discuss why, as a group, you chose what you chose
WHAT TO CHOOSE FROM
Metaphor
"Some things are white elephants that eat up a possessor's substance"
Metaphor
About the Author
Lars Eighner
About the Author
- Grew up in Houston, Texas
- Graduated from Lamar High School in 1966
- Studied creative writing under George Williams of Rice University at the Corpus Christi Fine Arts Colony
- Attended the University of Texas at Austin, doing major work in ethnic studies
~Obviously well-educated
About the Author
- Became homeless in 1988 after leaving a job he had held for ten years as an attendant at a state hospital in Austin, Texas
- Was homeless for 3 years
- While homeless, wrote down experiences
- Travels with Lizbeth, a memoir of homelessness in the American Southwest during the late 1980s
- On Dumpster Diving is one of essays in this memoir
Analysis
Purpose
- To educate people about how this form of self sustainability (dumpster diving) is not so much a selfish or greedy act, but more an honest way to survive through poverty
- To criticize those who take what they have for granted while not fully appreciating or understanding the value of the things they currently possess
Audience
The essay was published in the Threepenny Review, a literary magazine that is read by many academics and scholars
Audience
Connection to Audience
Keeping the target audience in mind, Eighner establishes himself as being on the same intellectual level of the reader, which affirms his credibility and garners the reader’s respect.
Connection to Audience
Tone
To understand tone, we first need to understand his use of logos, pathos, and ethos...
Tone
Ethos
- Presents himself as educated:
- to disprove any assumptions the reader may have about him based on his socioeconomic status
- to relate to the target audience
- Recounts his own experiences through a series of anecdotes
- Pizza box story
- "I began dumpster diving a year before I became homeless"
Ethos
- Advanced diction makes Eighner more relatable to the target audience by humanizing him as the readers’ intellectual peer rather than someone who is intellectually inferior
- The preconceived barrier separating the audience and Eighner is slowly reduced
- Allows Eighner to creatively earn the reader’s trust by using diction to establish ethos
Ethos
Addresses his discomfort after accidently consuming a large quantity of alchocol
Admits that some scavengers would have been ecstatic with the find but it was "not (his) idea of a good time"
Subtle, yet revealing line about his responsible behavior --> trustworthiness
Ethos
Logos
"Eating safely from dumpsters involves 3 principles: using the senses and common sense to evaluate..."
"'Dumpster' is a proprietary word belonging to Dempster Dumspter company"
Logos
Rather than describing the sensory details of the dumpsters, Eighner focuses on the “practical art of Dumpster diving” to prevent isolating the intended audience from his own experiences
*Use of logos is associated with tone
Pathos
Heavily concentrated towards the end of the passage
Pathos
"Many times in my travels I have lost everything but the clothes I was wearing and Lizabeth"
-Invokes sympathy
"I find my desire to grab for the gaudy bauble has been largely sated"
"I am sorry for them"
-Sympathy and critical towards the wealthy
Pathos
Pathos
Descriptions of can scroungers
"lay waste to everything"
"to be lost or ruined in the muck"
-Loaded language of negative diction used to portray "can scroungers" as the ones who lead to misconceptions of dumpster divers
-Differentiates the two
-Hierarchy established
-Can scroungers: animal-like
-Scavengers: human, respectful
Tone
TONE SHIFTS!!!
Tone
Begins with educated, yet detached, instructional manual
-like tone
-LOGOS
Distateful
~Can scroungers
-PATHOS
Pity
-towards the end for people who live off of desires instead of necessities
Syntax
Varying syntax
"Perhaps everyone who has a kitchen and a regular supply of groceries has, at one time or another, made a sandwich and eaten half of it before discovering mold on the bread or got a mouthful of milk before realizing the milk had turned".
~Long, structured sentences with appositives assert his level of education
"I live from the refuse of others. I am a scavenger."
~Short sentences emphasize important, to the point details
Syntax
When explaining steps of scavenger- length of sentences grow
"Every grain of rice seems to be a maggot. Everything seems to stink...The stage passes with experience".
-Short sentences demonstrate limited understanding
"He begins to understand: People do throw away perfectly good stuff, a lot of perfectly good stuff".
-Longer sentences- expansion of the mind (understanding)
Diction
- Uses relatively high-level diction
- "Separates the dilettani from the professionals"
- "Cocoa butter de-emulsified"
- "affluent"
- "dissipate"
- "begrudge"
~Relating to academic audience
~Establishes ethos
Diction
Diction
- In paragraphs 4-5, Eighner examines his own diction
- Words such as dumpster, scavenging, and foraging are examined in their definitions
- Implies the shallowness of these words, and he uses his real-life experience as a counterpoint to the various definitions
Point of View
Uses all 3 points of view
Point of View
First Person
First Person
- Establishes ethos
- "I began Dumpster diving about a year before I became homeless"
- Helps feel his experiences
- Personal voice
Second Person
Second Person
- "The best way to go through a Dumpster is to lower yourself into it"
- Uses 2nd person through process analysis portion
- Relates to audience - become a scavenger and experience the feeling through the story
Third Person
Third Person
- Used when explaining the stages of a scavenger
- By separating himself from this portion of the narrative, he is able to demonstrate that he has already been through those stages
- Seems more of an expert than a beginner
Selection of Detail
Specific food and their descriptions of whether they are good to eat or not...
"Raw fruits and vegetables seem perfectly safe to me"
Selection of Detail
"...crackers, cookies, cereal, chips, and pasta if they are free of visible contaminants and still dry and crisp"
"Leafy vegetables, grapes, cauliflower, broccoli, and similar things may be contaminated by liquids and may be impractical to wash"
-Demonstrates expertise
Imagery
Imagery
"Bulging, rusty, dented cans and cans that spew when punctured should be avoided"
-Constrasts previously positive tone about greatness of cans as a WARNING
"Every grain of rice seems to be a maggot"
-Scavenging at night
-Helps invoke the feeling of fear and discomfort when scavenging at such a time
Rhetorical
Strategies
Anaphora
"I like the frankness of the word 'scavenging,' which I can hardly think of without picturing a big black snail on an aquarium wall. I live from the refuse of others. I am a scavenger."
-Established credibility
Anaphora
"Can scroungers lay waste to everything...Can scroungers will even go through individual garbage cans..."
-Repetition of can scroungers induces an accusatory tone
-Places blame of misconception on these can scroungers
Antithesis
"...which is not so much a postitive sign as it is the absence of a negative one."
-questioning initial state
"A boxed pizza can be written off; anunboxed pizza doesn't exist."
-further explains system
Antithesis
Asydenton
"Boom boxes, candles, bedding, toilet paper, medicine, books, tyepwriter, a virgin male love doll, change sometimes amounting to many dollars..."
-emphasizes the broad range and length of list
Asydenton
Metaphor
"Some things are white elephants that eat up a possessor's substance"
Metaphor
White Elephant: a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of
Personification- "things...eat up" gives life to the heavy objects, and exemplifies struggle in choosing what objects to keep
Parallelism
"He can wipe the egg yolk off the found can, but he cannot erase the stigma of eating garbage out of his mind."
-Psychological impact of situation
Parallelism
Rhetorical Questions
"What was safe to eat?"
"Why was this discarded?"
~Immerses reader into perspective and mindset of a scavenger
Journal Questions
Journal Question #1
What is the effect of Lars Eighner's attention to language in the first five paragraphs? Does this opening appeal more to ethos, logos, or pathos? Explain.
"Long before I began Dumpster diving I was impressed with Dumpsters, enough so that I wrote the Merriam-Webster research service to discover what I could about the word 'Dumpster.'"
-Knowledge before exposure
"I began Dumpster diving about a year before I became homeless."
-Personal Experiences
Journal Question #5
Identify and explain two examples of irony in the section about students (paragrapghs 25-30). What does this section suggest about their relationship to the economy at large?
"The student does not know that, and since it is Daddy's money, decides not to take a chance."
-Source of money relates to health concerns
"...I treat it with less suspicion than an apparently perfect cheese found in similar circumstances"
-Something worse happened to normal cheese
Journal Question #6
Paragraph 37 concludes, "I do not want to paint too romantic a picture. Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life." What is the effect of these sentences? What is their rhetorical purpose?
-Signals the end of the topic of discussion
-Summarize concession
Journal Question #6
Journal Question #11
How would you characterize Eighner's attitudes toward wealth and materialism as revealed especially in paragraphs 74-80? What implications do they have regarding the economy at large?
-Abstract items eat up money
-Possessions don't consitute everything
-The poor and the very wealthy are similar while the middle people are stuck in a materialistic mentality