Stereotypes about Homelessness in America in Dumpster Diving by Lars Eighner
Lars Eighner's short essay, "Dumpster Diving," reveals the stereotypes about homelessness in America. In order to confirm these known stereotypes about American culture, Eighner includes autobiographical accounts of the economically inferior class, as well as revealing his elitist rules that governs the life of a homeless person. According to Eighner, homeless people fall into the following categories, 'can scroungers', 'Dumpster divers', and 'scavengers.' (Eighner, 1993). In addition, Eighner's blatant demonstration of his superiority to the people he scavenges from reveals his true character of snobbery. Although Eighner reveals that his chosen lifestyle
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He further proports that 'can scroungers' blatantly 'tear up the dumpsters' and disregard perfectly good items for other homeless people. Eighner sees 'can scroungers' at the bottom of his elitist list because of the obtrusiveness to the practice of common scavengers. Furthermore, Eigher declares, "a true scavenger hates to see good stuff go to waste, and what he cannot use he leaves in good condition in plain sight." Eighner as a homeless person uncovers his working within tradition of an archeologist. Similar to the archeologist, Eighner dubiously obtains information about those he scavenges from. Eighner feels that the refuge of the common consumer is more valuable then what people originally think. Eighner fervently states, "I avoid trying to draw conclusions about the people who dump in the Dumpsters I frequent," when in fact he constantly juxtaposes his position to the affluent people. For instance, Eigher frequents affluent college dorms because of the extreme wastefulness the college student's exhibit. He further passes judgment begrudgingly stating, "..it's Daddy's money."(Eighner, 1993) Moreover, it is the use of these rhetorical strategies that the author implements to deliberately expose his superiority over college students because of his swiftness in retrieving private information. Eighner's pretension even expands into academia where he finds; "college students often discard their papers. I am horrified
In Lars Eighner’s short essay “On Dumpster Diving”, he describes his experience of being homeless and the art of dumpster driving. Eighner prefers being referred to as a scavenger rather than a dumpster driver. Eighner stated “I like the frankness of the word scavenging. I live from refuse of others. I am a scavenger.” (383) He describes scavenging as a full time job, that requires a lot of effort. He believes that if one follows certain guidelines and rules, with doing so this could possibly help one to become efficient. One rule is knowing good place and time to look for food and other items, that could be useful. Another rule is knowing how to eat safely from a dumpster . Eighner said
The Box Man is an essay written by Barbara Ascher that addresses and criticizes how American society does not give homeless people the respect they deserve. In the essay, Ascher describes a night of the life of an average homeless man. Ascher accomplishes this by using her character the Box Man to represent the homeless people of America and to display how society sees the homeless. Barbara Ascher’s The Box Man utilizes thoughtfully chosen diction, precise negative and positive imagery, and effectively placed tone shifts to argue that the homeless, represented by the Box Man, are worthy of respect.
This is what became into his article. Eighner and his dog became homeless again when a teaching position fell through and there was no income for him to pay for his apartment. He currently lives in a small apartment in Austin and now supports himself by writing short stories and essays. It is nice to see he made something of himself and didn’t have to live on the streets and longer than he had to.
The author has also made intentional attempts to persuade the audience through the use of logical statements backed up by evidence. Eighner has started the essay by introducing how he viewed dumpsters as valuable objects. He then gives reasons why he is depending on dumpsters for his food. Being out of the workforce, he had no means of acquiring meals. He thus seeks refuge to the dump sites to get what he described as discarded and perfectly good food items. To support his position, Eighner informs his audience that this decision followed his inability to buy food as the little money he had was used to pay rent. He writes, “I put almost all my sporadic income into rent. The necessities of daily life I began to extract from Dumpsters” (Cite). Hence, he is able to convince the audience that his actions were as a result of saving money for rent.
American authors Barbara Lazear Ascher and Lars Eighner reveal unique relationships between socioeconomic classes and lessons learned from adversity in “On Compassion” and “On Dumpster Diving.”
Lars tells how he scavenges for the everyday items he needs. Unlike in “On Compassion” Lars does not get handouts from anyone he has to find it. Eighner sees a different side he fells the shame of people looking down on him, but he does not let it get to him. In “On Dumpster Diving” he tells of how students throw out canned goods, staples, papers, drugs, and spirits. (143) People throw out perfectly good things and he would find use for them. Eighner gives a guide on how to survive on the street, what to eat and how to pick the items. He gives a personal account of what it is like to live on the street. Lars story is influenced by the need to survive to the next
When most people think about a homeless man or a “bum”, words like drunk, addict, and lazy come to mind. These characteristics are true in some cases, but in others it’s just a way of stereotyping people, like the notion that blonde girls are dumb or Asians are bad drivers. In the two articles “On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner and “The Lady in Red” by Richard Lemieux, Eighner provides for himself free of cost by dumpster diving, but Lemieux is simply at what most people would call “rock bottom” of his life at the time, so he resorts to begging people for money. These two men are not your typical drunk bums hanging out behind a dumpster, they are
We as a society ignore those individuals and groups that we find different and/or threatening, we view them as ‘‘outsiders’’ (Belcher 930), and exclude them socially. In some respects, the societal images of the homeless have framed the causes of homeless squarely on the victim’s shoulders, rather than a structural one (Belcher 931). Thus, being homeless is the fault of the victim, not society. Therefore, discrimination and prejudice result from this social or public stigma which allows or enables society both to control people who are homeless and limit calls for broader reform. Stigma is likely to exist when there is labeling, stereotyping, separating (us versus them), status loss, and discrimination in a situation where there is unequal social, economic, and political power. Looking back at stigmatized individuals are often times viewed as flawed and less than human. The public views homelessness as an undesirable social problem and wants it addressed, while at the same time they hold negative views toward people who are homeless and stigmatize them. The problem of homelessness is becoming one of the main problems of the modern society, and yet we sit back and wait for change to occur forgetting that nobody can be immune against vague life situations and possible social dangers. According to German Sociologist U. Beck, we live in a risky society. Our society today is filled with
It is easy to be in agreement with Eighner that it is probably embarrassing at first to be seen picking out the trash but then it becomes easier to do it and start finding things you can actually use. He tells us the best way to get into the dumpster is to lower yourself in feet first. I love that he talks about him and his dog Lizbeth that he brings with him while dumpster diving. The purpose of his essay is to show the ways of living by scavengers and how people are able to survive and minimal resources. He is very artistic and passionate about what he is saying and bringing a sense of awareness that everyone isn’t fortunate and struggle every day. “Eighner spent the tail end of the 1980’s living on the streets of Austin, Texas., with several epic hitch hiking excursions to Los Angeles and back in pursuit of dubious writing gigs, with his dog Lizbeth as his one steady companion”(Publisher Weekly 2013). Being homeless wasn’t nearly as bad in the 80’s when Eighner was homeless as it is today and it seemed a little easier to survive then, rather than in today’s society.
What are solutions to solving the issue of homelessness in the United States Of America? Well,One solution to help homelessness is stabilizing people through shelter and create more shelters. Another brilliant idea could be permanent housing .Also ,implementing programs to reduce cost and give more job options to people with no high school diploma and people who released from prison or jail .using these strategies helps a lot.One way of solving poverty is implementing programs to reduce cost to certain people.
When it comes to sexual abuse and homelessness, people usually have misconceptions and false assumptions about who the person may be. For example, when people think of other homeless people they have the assumption that a homeless must be dirty, living outside in the streets and that they must have stopped working to reach that point. The reality is that a homeless person can look like any regular person, they can look well-groomed, and they do not have to be unemployed or in many cases people may be homeless just because they can’t afford to pay rent. Unfortunately, one of the sad truths about the U.S is that the government does not help as much as they should. “There is enough public rental assistance to help about one out of every four
It is the unique connection between challenging labor and the favorable outcome (in terms of one’s wisdom) that makes the working industry “good.” In contrast, those who work to meet the high demands of society’s version of “success” will undoubtedly fail in regards to their mentality. Clearly, Eighner supports Havel’s idea that one should take advantage of hard labor because of the spiritual benefits, not for the physical products that result from expenses. Moreover, he explicitly describes his aversion toward “can scroungers,” a symbol in the article that represents the materialistic people in society who depend on their physical possessions. The homeless man criticizes and accuses can scroungers of littering the dumpster area in an effort to find cans and exchange them for small cash; in fact, “they become so specialized that they can see only cans” (Eighner, 427). “Can scroungers” are dependent characters who are completely devoted into meeting their addictive needs to the point where they become blind from differentiating between what is rational and
In the United States, at least one million people are affected from hoarding. Hoarding first occurred when the collyers brothers were buried alive thus increase the fascination and anxiety during the 1930s to today (Herring 2011, p. 159). On March 21, 1947, Homer Collyer’s body was found “in a sitting position with his head on his knees. His brother’s, Langley Collyer’s body was found trapped in one of his own booby trap 10 feet away from Homer body. Their house “was packed with junk, [for example] newspapers, tin cans, magazines, umbrellas, old stoves, pipes, books, and much more.” In addition, only small tunnels were the only pathway through each room (Frost and Steketee 2010, p. 2). The Collyer’s brother’s house also contained eleven pianos, parts of a Model T Ford “discarded furniture, old ice boxes, baby carriages, animal bones, and old clothing …” (Penzel 2000, p. 246).
After making her way home from the shopping mall, she noticed a homeless man sitting on the corner of the street. She looked at him with disdain because of how dirty he was. She considered herself a much better person than he, having been Ivy-League educated and possessing a plethora of money, tantamount to her parents. They were diverging as she walked along the parameters of the car to get to the driver’s seat and left the man sitting on the ground. Once she made her way inside, she began to ponder what she had just seen. Having just moved into the big city that is New York, she wasn’t used to the anomaly that was homeless people. After she gave it some thought, she exited the vehicle and went and sat by the man. They began talking, making
If Eighner hadn’t been homeless he would be a part of the careless society he complains about. Eighner states “if I could I would naturally prefer to live the comfortable consumer life…” (Eighner 92) This evidence supports my argument that Eighners is bias. If he was not homeless he would be like you and me. It also supports Rogers’s argument that consumers alone cannot constructively change the amount of trash that is administered. Whether people have money or not they still contribute to landfills. This confirms Rogers and discredits Eighner. The evidence presented leads me to conclude that Rogers essay is a stronger argument.