Interpretive Essay

La’Tara Taylor ENC1102
Professor Myers
Interpretive Essay
Word Count: 885 Date: July 15, 2008

The Orchid Thief: Forms of Literary Non-fiction

Literary non-fiction represents a genre of both the innate power of the real and the deep significance of the fictional. This is displayed brilliantly in The Orchid Thief, which is a non-fiction book by America journalist and author Susan Orlean, based on her investigation of the 1994 arrest of John Laroche and a group of Seminoles in south Florida for poaching rare orchids in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. The book is based on an earlier article that Orlean wrote for The New Yorker magazine. Orleans encounters with Laroche allowed the reader to obtain knowledge and understanding from the prospective of the character John Laroche who was known as the “orchid thief.” The Orchid Thief demonstrates three forms of literary non-fiction clearly in the chapter “The Millionaires Hothouse.” Throughout the novel each element became a story in itself, much more interesting and involved than the one before. The forms of literary non-fiction present were personal experience, sense of place, and slice of history which is effectively displayed in the chapter of reference.

Personal experience provides insights into more familiar activities and allows the writer to draw significance from familiar episodes that can take place in an infinite number of forms. Orlean exhibits this powerfully in the chapter entitled “The Millionaires Hothouse”. Of the numerous examples the one that vividly describes personal experience is when Orlean writes, “When Laroche was a teenager he was fleetingly obsessed with photography. He decided he had to photograph every single species of Florida orchid in bloom, so every weekend for a while he loaded his mother with cameras and tripods and the two of them would trudge for hours through the woods. He wasn’t content for very long with merely photographing the orchids---he soon decided he had to collect the orchids themselves” (Orlean 13). This form of literary non-fiction is beneficial to the text because it gives the reader an idea of where and when Larches’ love of orchids developed. It offers a personal memoir in which Orlean provides examples of Laroche’s reminisces of his past. If personal experiences were not evident in the novel the reader would not be able to relate previous events that took place to the characters current actions and behaviors.

A sense of place is exhibited when Orlean not only uses visual details but her own strong sense of ambivalence throughout the text. In The Orchid Thief, Orlean’s implications along with the reader’s inference reveal the importance and connection of scene, and how the choice of showing or telling improves the sense of place. On Florida, Orlean writes, “At the same time the wilderness disappears before you eyes: fifty acres of Everglades dry up each day, new houses sprout on sand dunes, every year a welt of new highways rises” (Orlean 10). Then Orlean’s continues to state “That’s the way Florida strikes me, always fomenting change, its natural landscapes just moments away from being drained and developed, its most manicured places only an instant away from collapsing back into a jungle” (Orlean 10). The relationship between the two is important to the text because it gives the reader a chance to visualize and experience a particular place of origin through a variety of senses. The beneficial aspect of this form of literary non-fiction is if the reader has never had the opportunity to visit an exotic place, a vivid description can be portrayed mentally.

A range from recent prior events to the distant past can be revealed in the text through the literary aspect of slice of history. Orlean exhibits this form of literary non-fiction when she writes “Orchids have grown in the Florida swamps and hammocks since the swamps and hammocks existed, and orchids have been cultivated in Florida greenhouses since the end of the 1800s” (Orlean 18). This is significant because it gives historical details in reference to the relationship of the subsistence of orchids and their development in greenhouses. This form of literary non-fiction is used less frequently because of the research involved and its heavy reliance on facts; however, slice of history provides a valuable source of historical data. A slice of history is vital in this text because it provides the reader information of factual historic events that are relevant to the characters, plot, and theme of the book.

The "literary" in literary nonfiction pertains to the exploration of these elements. It also defines how the story itself is told. Literary nonfiction writers commonly use the techniques of fiction, including creation of a narrative arc, character development, scene-setting, action sequences, dialog and interior monolog. The true stories they write using these techniques have the drama of fiction and force of fact. Orlean describes her life in great detail through all six basic forms of literary nonfiction. This is accomplished vividly throughout the novel to ensure that the reader is able to encompass all aspects of Orlean’s being with the turn of every page. Throughout the chapter “The Millionaires Hothouse,” personal experience, sense of place, and slice of history worked together to formulate a detailed account of events that enabled the reader to relive the experience personally.


Works Cited
Orlean, Susan. The Orchid Thief. New York: Random, 1998.