COMPARISON/CONTRAST MODEL
The famous saying, "Someone's trash may be someone else's treasure,"
is profoundly but differently interpreted in the essays, "Dumpster Diving"
and "The Town Dump." Appreciation remains the tone throughout the
essays: the recognition of generally under-appreciated garbage. The authors,
Lars Eighner and Wallace Stegner, agree on the value of discarded items, but
for entirely different reasons.
Growing up in the small, boring town of Whitemud, Wallace Stegner recognizes
the town dump as exciting, adventurous, and full of wonder. The garbage forms
a documentation of past events that merge together, creating a historical
storyboard. The dump "contained relics of every individual who had ever
lived there" and told Stegner many things about the town and its people.
While working as an educational tool, the town dump taught him, more so than
anything else, about how people live their lives. His conclusion is that a
community can be characterized by what it throws away. The content in the
dump tells one what is cherished and what is not, thus portraying the values
and standards of individual and community.
While Wallace Stegner, the author of "The Town Dump," emphasizes
the adventures and education to be gained by rummaging through the dump's
ancient artifacts, Lars Eigner describes the usefulness of the trash in his
essay, "Dumpster Diving." He frowns upon the wasteful college students
who throw out perfectly good food; however, without them he would struggle
to survive, as they provide his meal ticket for the day. He also feasts on
unclaimed orders from the city pizza place.
Eigner's account reads like an instruction manual that meticulously describes
the tricks of the scavenging trade: how to avoid food poisoning, when and
where to scavenge, what to leave and what to take, what is useful and what
is useless. "Dumpster Diving" describes going through trash factually,
methodically, and seriously, as the author considers the practicality and
functionality of the garbage, hardly ever finding a story in it. By contrast,
"The Town Dump" treats trash imaginatively and creatively and its
uses are hardly ever noted: "The dump was our poetry and our history.
. . . Some little part of what we gathered…we managed to bring back to
usefulness, but most of our gleanings we left lying around." Wallace
Stegner is interested in the past history and stories suggested by the dump's
artifacts, whereas Lars Eigner is only interested in their present use and
practical value. Only "occasionally" does Eigner find a story in
the garbage. His bottom line is that "A thing I cannot make useful…has
no value however rare or fine it may be."
Another sharp contrast lies in the authors' attitudes to the discarders of
trash. Lars Eigner scorns the wastefulness of those who dump in dumpsters,
while Wallace Stegner longs to learn about them through interpreting their
refuse and is thrilled by them and their lives. Stegner also recognizes his
own trash in the dump, so that he is one of the discarders as well as a scavenger,
while Eigner draws a line between those who dump and those who scavenge.
Although both authors display their interest in other people's waste, the
motives that trigger their interests are entirely different. In Eigner's essay,
the garbage is a necessity rather than an entertaining educational tool. But
in both essays, the authors learn a lot about people and their values from
what they throw away. Stegner concludes: "a community may be as well
judged by what it throws away-what it has to throw away and what it chooses
to-as by any other evidence." Eigner learns "the transience of material
being" from dumpster diving and decides "that mental things are
longer lived than other material things." Both essays portray the fact
that one can come to many conclusions about a person's lifestyle and values
by what he or she has owned, discarded, treasured and abandoned. And both
authors learn about themselves too from their dump and dumpster explorations.
CD 11-12-01
