Summary of ‘On Dumpster Diving’ for My English Class

Note: this received no grade because it is not an example of a summary. Wah waah.

Alana Post
Summary of ‘On Dumpster Diving’ by Lars Eighner
Literature and Composition
09/08/08

In his essay-cum-tutorial ‘On Dumpster Diving’, Lars Eighner presents a critical analysis of the practice of scavenging for food and explores the mentality both of the scavenger and the scavengee, that is, the sort of person for whom otherwise viable items are considered trash.

Against wastefulness to a fault, Eighner develops a thesis of pragmatism from which no group’s ethics are spared or given special regard. He casts gentle aspersions upon the rich and poor alike, calling attention in particular to the cavalier attitudes toward possessions displayed by college students, winos, can scroungers, and “pack-rat types”.

The latter group, which seems to encompass the breadth of socioeconomic strata, is the most nebulous and perhaps most dangerous. It comes from the simple desire for possessions, putting some psychological craving before necessity. This need to accumulate has been evidenced in even non-human creatures, and appears to somehow stem from some innate anxiety which drives us to collect all that might potentially have use. “Use”, in this sense, is a broad term. A useful item could provide direct physical care or provide sentimental value. Eighner, however, takes a much narrower view on what is useful. He views them as simply the belongings which allow survival and enrichment: food, clothing, bedding, money, and perhaps a good book here and there (although he is not above a “virgin sex doll”, one must concede).

In Eighner’s world, the people who contaminate dumpsters (the aforementioned can scroungers) are equally as bad as the people who waste useful goods. In fact, without the largesse of the wasteful, his lifestyle as described in ‘On Dumpster Diving’ would not be possible. He likens this to a sort of symbiotic relationship with his environment, in which he is both an ancient hunter-gatherer and a force of nature, as necessary as the much-maligned vulture or maggot.

On the subject of the latter, Eighner makes several arguments against what he views as societally instilled conceptions of disgust. He points out that a can of food in a dumpster is as clean and healthy as a can of food in a cupboard, and even safer to eat than one’s leftovers. He touts this as the importance of common sense and the triumph of intelligence, resourcefulness, and powers of observation over ignorance, unexamined sentimentality, and the culture of expedience.

In Lars Eighner’s world, capitalism becomes an ecosystem mirroring even the most micro-ecological environments. We all inadvertently play roles, the main distinguishing characteristic being that some of us are aware and some of us are blind to them. In his essay, he seeks to lift away the veil that separates the two groups. In so doing, despite the challenge to one’s closely-guarded sense of self, he enables us to connect in a much closer way to our immediate environment, our impact upon it, and the lives of those whom we interact with, even those whom we glance away from as they emerge from our dumpsters holding the proof of our ill-examined priorities aloft.