Gleaners and Divers

The common misperception about homeless people is they are all criminals or drug abusers. In the movie The Gleaners and I, and the article On Dumpster Diving there are individuals that break this stereotype, and try to better themselves by using these activities to find what food they can. The individuals mentioned in the movie The Gleaners and I include people that have lost their job and those that were raised gleaning. In the article On Dumpster Diving Lars Eighner did have a job and started “diving” a year before he became homeless.

A woman named Agnus Varda made a movie about one of the ways it is possible for the lower class European family to survive. These families must look for gleaning spots left over from the harvest. Gleaning is when you go the fields or patches to collect the either thrown out or what’s left on the ground when the workers finish gathering the crops. The owners of these areas let the gleaners do their job after they complete the collection process. The gleaners are allowed to do this because the food that is left behind has fallen on the ground and can’t be used in markets. Certain types of foods can not be used because they are odd sizes and shapes; these types of foods are left in piles for gleaning.

Another of the ways that a person can survive is by scrounging around and through a dumpster. These types of people perform the activity of dumpster diving, a necessity some use to survive in rough times. Lars Eighner is one such person who started dumpster diving one year before he became homeless. Before Eighner became homeless he and his dog Lizbeth “were living in a house on Avenue B in Austin, as his savings ran out“ (455). Almost all of his money went into the rent and soon Eighner and Lizbeth had to start a soon to be routine. Eighner states “I have learned much as a scavenger.” which shows that he could have been on the streets for quite some time. He knows that canned goods turn up in dumpsters very often and although even with modern canning methods there is still the chance that it can contain botulism (455). Heat can break it down, but this also requires much more cooking than people can usually do to canned goods. He also states that “For -myself, I avoid game, poultry, pork, and egg-based foods whether I find them raw or cooked” (457); this is because Eighner does not have the means to cook what he finds all the time.

According to Eighner there are several predictable stages a person can go through when learning to scavenge (460). At first the new diver tries to hide in the shadows or wait until it is dark, this stage eventually will pass. When it does there