Rhetorical Analysis Of On Dumpster Diving

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Successful author Lars Eighner, in his piece On Dumpster Diving, describes his life as a homeless man who had to eat food that had been discarded from other people. The piece’s informative, yet humorous tone helps describe the lives of the homeless to the unknowing general public and also supplies the audience with ways to survive if they ever find themselves in this situation. On a deeper level, the piece reveals the horrible truth of how wasteful the American people are. Eighner uses many strategies to accomplish this, like appealing to ethos, using specific diction, incorporating ironic elements throughout his piece, and utilizing pathos. To begin his paper, Eighner explained the dictionary definition of the word “Dumpster” and the reasons …show more content…
Shockingly to the audience, he states that these dumpsters “are very rich.” Many people have the idea that college students are extremely poor, so they would not have much to throw away. However, Eighner refutes this argument by saying the college students’ dumpsters is where he got the best meals. This ironic twist helps explain that even the people who seemingly have barely nothing are extremely wasteful, as it is the norm of this country to just throw things away. People in America, as soon as they have control over their trash, will throw away things that might not be completely bad, as shown through the example of college students. While on his scavenges for food, Eighner mentions that he will come across many interesting things and this is not exclusive to the college dumpsters. These items range from seemingly ordinary, like “bank statements,” to crazy, like “a small paper bag containing” inappropriate items. These things seem so different; however, all these items give insight into the lives of the people who threw them away. Although Eighner has access to all this knowledge about someone, he never judges them. Ironically, many of the people he decides not to judge will judge him instantly and only based on the fact that he must live on other people's trash. The ironic element of the people judging the author for using what they see as junk …show more content…
While describing the things he usually collects when he scavenges, Eighner switches tones to a feeling of sadness as he mentions the eventual death of his dog, Lizbeth. The reader instantly feels grief as he imagines Lizbeth dead body in a dumpster because “[he] will have no better place for her.” Also, the reader feels a spark of anger because the dog would have a better place if Eighner had the resources to do so. However, since America is so wasteful and instead of donating old, but still good, items they usually throw them away, Eighner will have to throw away his dog instead of having the ability to pay proper respects to his best friend. The feeling of sadness is prevalent in this section, in a different section the author appeals to humour as he mentions one of the items he has eaten from the trash. Eighner describes the time that he was getting his food out of the dumpster behind a pizza shop. The meals were decent and consistent, until “ “jalapenos began showing up on most of the discarded pizzas.” This was supposed to deter him from eating the pizzas, too bad he had no problems with the spicy vegetable. More importantly, it is humorous that the pizza shop attempted to prevent the author from eating their trash. If the pizza place did not want someone eating the pizzas they threw away, they should stop throwing them
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