Summary Of On Dumpster Diving

In everyday life the poor have to suffer through recurring conflict.Throughout the book, the author, Andy Mulligan, illustrates the poor treatment towards the dumpsite people. Andy Mulligan brings the real hardships of the poor in third world countries to life in the novel Trash through his description. Mulligan demonstrates his sympathetic view of the poor through his use of similes to compare to animals, his depiction of the authority in Bahala, and how these powerful people treat

The trash found in the streets of the city symbolized as pay for the people. Of paragraph three, a person brings a bag home and separated things he would usually find on the streets; rags, bones, and old metal. Although it does not seem much of a big deal in today’s society, during 1854, many people were having it hard. The author used imagery describing many items. Again, in paragraph three, the individual is said to travel from twenty to thirty miles with a heavy bag on his back during the summer. This describes the person to be hard working and strong. Hyperbole is used in some parts of the excerpt involving homeless. In paragraph four, it said the homeless continue to haunt today’s cities. It would seem the homeless aren’t a major problem of today’s cities compared with the crime. Figurative language can determine the types of languages being used, this relates to how a story is written with a rhyme scheme.

Imagine spending one year of your life living in a dumpster. Not just the average, everyday dumpster, but a customized dumpster suited to meet all of the essential needs for one to live in. Professor Jeff Wilson, also referred to as “Professor Dumpster,” is engaged in a one year project in which he will be sleeping in a dumpster every night. His future plans consist of making the dumpster even more appealing by adding a toilet, solar panels, a second floor, and several other amenities. Wilson says in the article, “‘We could end up with a house under $10,000 that could be placed anywhere in the world, fueled by sunlight and surface water, and people could have a pretty good life’” (James Hamblin ℙ4). In the article, “Living Simply in a dumpster,”

Andy Mulligan depicts poverty as a major global issue in the novel ‘Trash’. An example to prove this, is a quote from Raphael, describing the living conditions of his… not so ‘home-like’ home. ‘The trash bags come together. Piles and piles of it, and it all ends up here with us. It’s a place they call Behala, and it’s a rubbish-town.’ In this quote by Raphael, Andy Mulligan uses

To Anderson, the existing articles and books on homelessness were unable to accurately touch upon the vagrancy problem in Chicago. He, on the other hand, had personal experience. The Hobo omits any direct personal accounts from Anderson, but his perspective has given him an advantage in connecting with his interview subjects and with his writing. He has since come to realize the humor in his writing a work on the hobo “getting by’ for the sake of also trying to ‘get by’ in his new Chicago student life. The Hobo is the first of his works and provided a foundation for him to develop his unique ethnographic approach that incorporates his personal experience with unstructured interviews and statistical data to paint a picture of the homeless

Becoming homeless can happen to anyone in the blink of an eye with most thinking that they will never have to deal with this harsh reality in their lives. In an excerpt from Sherman’s article, in an interview with struggling resident Shondra Patrick, she explains how her rent went from a month-to-month lease, until “the cost of the rent up slowly over the course of the last six years from $850 to almost $3000.” This increase continued until Shondra was forced to move out into a family residence. This technique is happening everywhere, from highly populated and famous downtowns, to the calm, suburban life in any given area. Overtime, everyday people are forced to leave and become homeless, all due to their financial position. But of course, what does this have to do with you or affect you? Not only does general homelessness contribute to increases in crime, poverty rates, and drug use, but they are discriminated against socially and even politically. In an anonymous published report, “The Criminalization of Homelessness,” the author explains how many states have created ordinances that “target” the homeless, making it illegal to simply sit or sleep in public areas. The author also goes on to explain how other more, extreme measures have been taken by cities to discriminate the homeless by “sweeps of areas in which homeless people sleep, laws that restrict their freedom of movement, search and seizure of

The story “Unemployed and Working” from Simon Wykoff shows his conventional thinking by writing to influence readers to reimagine the stereotype of the “lazy bum” commonly given to homeless people. The author explains how homeless people work to accomplish the most important job to humans, surviving, which can be just as difficult as a conventional job. Wykoff gives his own personal testimony about the life of his homeless father and the daily struggles and process he went through. He first explains his father’s decision of not using services for homeless people, and how he coped with that while living on the streets. He then goes through each task done by his father in a day, starting with saying how there was often a good chance that something of his was stolen while he was asleep and elaborating on how his father would buy himself food if he had made enough money, but if he had not then he would have to check dumpsters to satisfy his hunger. By saying how his father had usually tried to locate a paper to look for job opportunities and had applied for jobs often, this supports the author’s idea that not all homeless people are lazy bums. He explains the difficulty of his father having to use a bike to get around the city while being homeless (which he would also use to carry around items found by dumpster diving to sell), and how he would play music on the side of the street for income before finally having to dangerously look for a place to sleep at night.

He’s an honest person surviving the best he can without breaking his moral code. He doesn’t like drinking the in afternoon because he doesn’t want to cause a public disturbance when he has no place to go. Additionally, Eighner depends on dumpster diving to feed himself and his dog, and yet he still has “never placed a bogus order to increase the supply of pizzas” (402), even though it would mean he would have a meal for the night. He doesn’t commit these petty offenses because he doesn’t see himself as separate from those who work in the pizza restaurant. He doesn’t feel entitled to inconveniencing the restaurant just because he won’t have food. The fact that he would refuse himself food based on his moral principle makes him more relatable to his readers because it withstands their own views. Moreover, Eighner is completely honest with his audience. Throughout the beginning of his essay, the ideal of Dumpster diving almost seems pleasant. He never has to pay for his meals and he sometimes finds a bit of cash. However, rather than “paint to romantic a picture” of what his life is like, he gives the readers a reality check. It almost comes as a surprise when he says “no matter how careful I am I still get dysentery at least once a month… Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life” (404). While we know that dysentery is exceedingly common for someone who

I feel that the author’s purpose was transmitted successfully through his essay, despite how distracting the organization of the text was. The author focused on employing the use of rhetorical techniques such as defining, describing, explaining a process, and narrating. In paragraphs three and four, Eighner takes the time to give the reader his ideas about words he feels represent his hobby the best. Choosing words like scavenging and scrounging as opposed to diving is how he defines what he does to gain necessary resources. In other words, he is defining his idea of the term dumpster diving for the audience. The new definition is meant to make dumpster diving sound like a necessary and tolerable thing so that readers will not constantly

Materialism is the constant obtaining of commodity while sacrificing human relationships. For decades people have had the notion that obtaining materialistic goods is a portrait of success. In the essay “On Dumpster Diving” Lars Eighner stated that he learned “The first is to take what I can use and let the rest go. I have come to think that there is no value in the abstract. A thing I cannot use or make useful, perhaps by trading, has no value, however fine or rare it may be.” (593). Materialism is harmful in multiple ways on society, labor, and the environment.

He was very successful and rich. However, due to economic problems and poor decisions making, he lost all of his money, his house went into foreclosure, and his family left him. He talked about living in his 1997 Chrysler minivan behind Kinkos in Marino, California. During his homeless period he was very lonely and struggled to find a job due to his extended time of unemployment. Even though he couldn’t find a job, there was one thing that helped him escape homelessness. He wrote about how Craigslist had jobs that helped him make a source of income. Craigslist also had advertisements for rooms that David could rent for an affordable price. If David wanted to visit a family member, Craigslist had a transportation option called rideshare. Rideshare allowed people to share the cost of driving together to the same destination. David’s details throughout his essay helped show the challenges of being homeless and how hard it can be to get a job. He also described in great detail how using Craigslist can help a person escape homelessness by finding ways to make money, finding a place to live, and finding a source of transportation. David’s detail in his essay informed people that failure can happen to anyone no matter what social class you

Have you imagined yourself being a homeless in a rich country or a city? Well, most of the answers will be no, because we do not wish to live in a miserable life that we see and know about homeless people. A newspaper reporter by Kevin Fagan in his article, “Homeless, Mick Dick was 51, Looked 66.” This article was taken from Cengage Learning Online digital database. In this piece, Fagan examined the main figure which was a homeless man named Mike Dick. Fagan and his partner interviewed and documented his story from his early background struggles with addiction and abuse. Mike had been a homeless on the streets of San Francisco since the 1980s and the fatigues made his physical appearance looks bad. This is why many social researchers call this to be “street 66”

The homeless are faced with a continuing need to satisfy a set of basic needs that are shared not only amongst themselves, but with the domiciled public as well. These require including income, food, shelter, and elimination. Homeless street people, although, must satisfy these needs in the absence of both the privacy and conventional supports available to the domiciled public. As a result, institutional and political responses that affect on the means to satisfy the needs create considerable barriers that the homeless must conquer, creating their survival strategies and, thus, their public

She never thought someone special in her life could be as homeless as those on the streets. Until one hot summer day in 2009, Ashley tells us “My little brother Jay left his key on the coffee table and walked out of his house in West Texas to live on the streets” (68). For me, if someone left their keys, phones, or even their clothes at home, I would say that person perhaps forgot about it, or just took a short walk on the road. But for Ashley it was different, her brother was diagnosed with paranoid

The Gleaners and I, is a 21st century documentary Agnes Varda shaped to depict the interactions she has with a class of people called, gleaners. Gleaners are a specific class of individuals who not only gather rural agricultural surplus but also urban supermarket trash. They salvage through acres of agriculture, performing backbreaking work, to provide for their needs without spending any currency. Gleaners believe in the saying, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Some say Varda, throughout her entire film and the film itself, uses a style of filmmaking that is often interpreted as a statement that great things like art can still be created through scraps, yet modern economies encourage people to only use the finest product. (Wikipedia)