In "The Dump Ground," Wallace Stegner describes the town dump in Whitemud from childhood images, still vivid after the passage of years. His essay is a gradual buildup of images, all of which contribute to our overall impression of Whitemud and the people who have lived there. Stegner develops a thematic yearning for the town's and his own past, in Whitemud's lost and found pile of images--the town's collective history as evidenced by what it has thrown away. By the end of his essay, Stegner explicitly tells the reader what has been shown all along--that a town can be judged as much by what it throws away as much as by what it chooses to keep. In addition, Stegner senses his own mortality, personal memories and possessions being no more permanent than those of his fellow Whitemud neighbors.
In his journey through the Whitemud dump, Stegner finds himself, that is to say, he catches glimpses of his past that have remained dormant up until now. In a sense, he receives more than he has bargained for. A trip washed in memories (nostalgia) for the town has given way to deeper, personal childhood memories. In other words, the town's collective consciousness, as represented by the dump, has drawn him into a region deeper within his soul.
Stegner gets a glimpse of his own mortality when he finds some volumes from a set of Shakespeare that his father had bought before he was born. They had found the dump after a long journey through the United States on their way back to Canada. Because books were a rarity for the Stegner household, the author knew them immediately. He likens finding the charred volumes to finding his own name on a gravestone (35). It is important to Stegner's theme of the dump as communal resting place that the books be charred, as if partially cremated. They exist in an incinerated half-life, still there in some form, to invoke the poetry of memory.
Stegner drifts in and out of the dump's collective c...