Analysis Of Travel With Lizbeth By Lars Eighner

Lars Eighner’s was born on November 25th, 1948. At some point during his studies as a young adult, he decided to drop out of the University of Texas at Austin which he was attending at the time and took up a job at a state mental hospital in Texas. Some time later after taking this job, in 1988, he left this job over disagreements over policy at this job. Thanks to a lack of money, the lack of a job, and being evicted thanks to the lack of rent payments Eighner quickly became homeless. Over the course of three years Eighner traveled across the United States making what little money he could writing for many magazines with his only companion Lizbeth, which was his dog. In 1993 he wrote a book called “Travels with Lizbeth” which detailed his …show more content…
He tells short stories about things he has come upon within his travels of being homeless and dumpster diving. For an example when Eighner dives in dumpster he sometimes come across items that tell a story about the person who owns the dumpster. Items like pill bottles, various drugs, bank statements, and photographs are all very telling of how a person's trash can reflect of how their personality and life are like (Eighner 681). He also speaks to the reader about the other people that tend to dive in dumpsters. For instance there are the can scroungers, these are people who only go through dumpsters to get aluminum cans to redeem for cash. He strongly dislikes them bordering on hate because these can scroungers disrespect the dumpster they dive in. Because they only want cans, they will often ruin the dumpster for every other dumpster diver. Ruining the dumpster is also harmful to the image of the lowly dumpster diver as well. A dumpsters owner will see a closed dumpster now opened and trashed. This image now appears to all divers to this owner thus causing their image to drop