Analysis

The Orchid Thief: Realism Through Style

If a writer fails to instill an omnipresent sense of reality into a work of literary non-fiction, he or she cannot hope for an effective portrayal of events. Susan Orlean’s work The Orchid thief succeeds where many fail in effectively depicting events as real to her readers. This short work is a nonfiction account of Orlean’s interaction and admiration of “the orchid thief” himself (a man named Laroche) and his perspective on passion, specifically that regarding orchids. Orlean’s style throughout The Orchid Thief serves to portray a more real depiction of events for the reader. Her most evident elements of style throughout the story are diction, syntax, and her narrative mode.

Beginning with diction, Orlean imbues poignancy into her writing by the way of engaging and descriptive words. Diction is simply defined as the author’s choice of words in literary non-fiction (Minot 35). Referring to Laroche and Lee, Orlean writes, “They seemed as if they were cut from the same flammable cloth, but I suspected they had never met, only because I believe the universe would have exploded if they had ever been in a room together,” (Orlean 199) choosing to use phrases like “cut from the same flammable cloth” and “the universe would have exploded” instead less colorful diction. Should Orlean have chosen to use “they were similar people” and “I might have gotten too much of Laroche and Lee” her delivery would have been bland, too formal, and ultimately ineffective in portraying her perception of the two people. Orlean’s attention to her feelings on the subject, not just materialistic objectivity, is represented by her diction in the book and serves to make her account more human and, thus, more interesting and real for the reader.

The words Orlean chooses alone do not fully serve to give life to The Orchid Thief, her choice in sentence structure can further betray Orlean’s feelings on her subject matter. Orlean’s writing through her use of syntax further serves to make her story more realistic for her readers where syntax is regularly defined in terms of length and type when accounting for sentence structure (Minot 35). In Orlean’s portrayal of the Fakahatchee swamp she writes, “The swampy part of the Fakahatchee is hot and wet and buggy and full of cottonmouth snakes and diamondback rattlers and alligators and snapping turtles and poisonous plants and wild hogs and things that stick into you and on you and fly into your nose and eyes,” (Orlean 35) recounting details in a most informal and run-on fashion. This syntax serves two purposes. First, the informal tone betrays her anxiety about the swamp and gives the reader a sense, through her anxiety, that she’s overwhelmed by the place. Second, the swamp is characterized more effectively in terms of a blur of all its details, not just a culmination of them. It seems like a truly chaotic and overwhelming entity. By Orlean’s fashion of depicting detail through syntax, not just simply her choice of details, she effectively makes the story clearly human in perspective and more real for the reader.

Whereas syntax accounts for the human perspective in terms of detail in The Orchid Thief, Orlean’s narrative mode accounts for her overarching point of view. A writer’s narrative mode is the way in which he or she balances action, reflection, dialogue, and description in the work (Minot 35) and is directly telling of a writer’s place in the story. When Orlean writes, “…Tony called and asked again if I was really ready for the Fakahatchee. At that point I gave up trying to be tough and let every moment in the lake at Camp Cardinal ooze back into my memory, and when I finally met Tony at the ranger station I almost started to cry,” (Orlean 37) she recounts her experience in a very reflective and personal way. Her opinions in The Orchid Thief aren’t impositions upon an omniscient or totally objective point of view, she clearly establishes herself as a participating member of the account. For a personal account to be realistic to the reader, the events of the story must seem to be happening to the main character, not just simply for the main character, and Orlean’s particular attention to thoughts and personal reflection in first person perspective serve to accomplish this. Orlean’s attention to her perspective, both the subjective and objective, creates a more realistic air to her story for her reader.

Personal accounts in literary non-fiction should never read like a textbook. Through Orlean’s paid attention to the literary concerns of diction, syntax, and narrative mode, she has rendered her account in The Orchid Thief something more than a bland recounting of facts and events. Orlean conveys a real sense of what it was like to be in her shoes and experience Florida and orchid obsession, which thrusts her work into the realm of the effective and gives extra value to her story. More accurately, The Orchid Thief is a recounting of human feelings and perspectives, and the story benefits by becoming more realistic to its reader.

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Works Cited

Minot, Stephen. Literary Nonfiction. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2003.

Orlean, Susan. The Orchid Thief. New York: Random, 2000.