IRB: 50 Essays: On Dumpster Diving by Lars Eighner

                This section’s Independent Reading Book is an anthology of fifty essays selected by Samuel Cohen. The reading that I chose from this anthology is On Dumpster Diving by Lars Eighner, a blunt yet perceptive process analysis essay that explains the travels that Eighner had on the streets, homeless and as the title suggests, diving in dumpsters for food and other necessities.

                Eighner begins by describing what foods are safe to eat. He notes that the telltale signs of “safety” are obvious imperfections on the food, as “he [the diver] is constantly reminded that most food is discarded for a reason…Yet a lot of perfectly good food can be found in Dumpsters”. Canned foods, yogurt, candy, and even cold pizzas served as much of Eighner’s diet during his three years on the street. In addition to food, Eighner tells of how a scavenger (as he prefers the term) goes through certain stages, starting with self-disgust and then ending with a “dissipation of the shyness”.

                Not only does a scavenger find his sustenance through dumpsters, but also often unintentionally discovers surprises about those who discarded the trash or predicts where the best disposed items will come from. Eighner states that the college campuses are often the best sources of good items, and after a discourse on the oddities he has discovered in dumpsters, ends on this note: “…this is an attitude I share with the very wealthy- we both know there is plenty more where what we have came from. Between us are the rat-race millions who have confounded their selves with the objects they grasp and who nightly scavenge the cable channels looking for they know not what…I am sorry for them.”

                The strength in Eighner’s rhetoric of process analysis is simply the blunt and clear manner in which he describes what for many may be a less-than-appealing topic. On Dumpster Diving was written for his “rat races” that he mentions and written with the purpose of informing and making a statement about dumpster diving, as well as the wastefulness of society in general. The process analysis stands prevalently as piece by piece, Eighner takes apart different aspects of dumpster diving that makes it simpler and easier to understand: in effect, even sometimes more appealing to the common man.