Synthesis of The Orchid Thief and Adaptation

Jyoti
ENC 1102
Professor Myers
Thematic Synthesis
1539
7/31/2008

Synthesis of The Orchid Thief and Adaptation

The Orchid Thief, a literary nonfiction book by Susan Orlean, is about John Laroche, the person accused of stealing orchids from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve in Florida (6). Adaptation, a movie directed by Spike Jonze, is about a lovelorn screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, who turns to his less talented twin brother, Donald Kaufman, for help when his efforts to adapt The Orchid Thief into a movie are fruitless. The book's theme is people being transformed pursuing a passion. Similarly, the movie has a theme of people passionate about accurately representing the book into a screenplay and experiencing change. This theme of people's transformation by their passion appears in both the book and the movie using three nonfiction forms, namely, a sense of place, personal experience, and biographical sketch.

In the book, a sense of place, a literary nonfiction form depicts Florida, which provides Laroche with his object of passion, orchids, and by pursuing orchids, Laroche transforms himself. A sense of place paints a verbal pictorial (Minot 9). This is vividly apparent when Orlean portrays Naples, the place of Laroche’s trial in Florida, as “warm and gummy” (7). This describes Florida’s warmth and humidity. The humid and sultry Florida provide abundance of orchids enabling Laroche to pursuit them with passion. Orlean continues to paint the verbal pictorial while adding that the wild and the tame part of Florida are “always in flux” (9). As the Everglades dries up, new buildings and highways sprung up. However, the cleared land is very fertile, and on it, vegetation grows up rapidly and the flux continues (Orlean 9). This flux enables orchids to be illusive and not easily within reach and only, the people with ardor to spend time and energy in pursuit attain discovery. Similar to the book, a sense of place guides people’s passion in the movie. This manifests in Robert McKee’s quote in Adaptation:
Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman (Jonze).
This implies that a constant state of change exists in the world as in the Orleans depiction of flux in Florida. Orlean and Jonze give their audience a sense of place, which is constantly changing while providing people opportunities to pursue their passion and experiencing change within themselves.

Not only does the two works describe a sense of place, they also relate the personal experience of the portrayed characters transformation while pursuing their passion. In the movie too, just as in the book, Orlean changes due to her experience with Laroche and orchids in Florida. A personal experience is a composition based on the authors experience and reactions based on the views of the place visited (Minot 7). Orlean transforms herself by her passionate personal experience with Laroche in Florida. Laroche intrigues Orlean and she visits Florida to meet him. She develops a love and hate relationship with Florida. She enjoys the Art Deco hotels and the huge delis in Florida. However, she dreads jellyfish, the look of her hair in humidity and the unsettling Florida’s heat. Thus, by pursuing Laroche, Orlean develops a love and hate relationship with Florida. The transformation of Orlean is also evident in the movie. While spending time with Laroche and learning about orchids, she falls in love with him and enjoys getting a high from drugs. She asserts while being stoned to be “Very happy now” (Jonze). Her experience with Laroche and Florida makes her realize that change is integral part of her life. She quotes “What I came to understand is that change is not a choice. Not for a species of plant and not for me” (Jonze). While indulging with Laroche in Florida, Orlean’s character experiences regret of becoming a drug addict and of committing adultery. She admits, “It's over. Everything's over. I did everything wrong. I want my life back. I want it back before everything got fucked up. I want to be a baby again. I want to be new” (Jonze). Laroche's enthusiasm for orchids draws Orlean to learn from him and gain insight into his behavior. Orlean realizes the importance of having an ardor in one’s life since it allows one to focus. This reflects in her quote, “There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size” (Jonze). Both Orlean and Jonze render characters that experience change while being engaged with an object of their passion.

Along with personal experience of the characters causing their transformation, the details of their biographical sketches portrayed in both the movie and book, help the audience understand who undergoes transformation. A biographical sketch of Laroche is palpable in both the book and the movie. A biographical sketch is a pictorial of a person as viewed by the author (Minot 7). Orlean describes Laroche as eccentric based on his extreme passion and then abandonment of various objects like turtles, Ice Age fossils, orchids, and fish (3-4). This demonstrates that Laroche is fickle in his attachments. Laroche’s passion for orchids blinds him to the law. He displays reckless abandonment to the consequences of his actions when he tries to steal rare orchids from the Fakahatchee preserve. Laroche’s immorality gets him caught and earns him prosecution for his crime. This proves the sketch which Laroche's employer, the Seminole tribe of Florida, has of him, a “Troublemaker and Crazy White Man” (Orlean 3). By painting a picture of Laroche and showing different facets of his personality, Orlean helps readers visualize the character of Laroche and gives them a feeling of having personally met him. As in the book, the sketches in the movie help the audience understand the characters undergoing transformation. “Charlie Kaufman writes the way he lives... With Great Difficulty. His Twin Brother Donald Lives the way he writes... with foolish abandon. Susan writes about life... But can't live it. John's life is a book... Waiting to be adapted. One story... Four Lives... A million ways it can end” (Jonze). Each character excited about something in their life and struggling to make it complete. Laroche, played by Chris Cooper, brings humanity to the role of the orchid thief, really grounding the narrative and making it all believable. This is obvious in Laroche’s quote in the movie regarding orchids “Because they're so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world” (Jonze). This shows that orchid’s adaptation to survive against all odds delights, inspires Laroche, and ignites his passion for orchids. In the movie Adaptation, the most spectacular sketch is of Charles Kauffman who is passionately at war with himself. “Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked” (Jonze). This portrays him as being overly concerned of his image in the minds of others and constantly second guessing himself. In the movie, Charles realizes the key to success in his life is pursuing what delights him and not caring about what other people think about him. This realization transforms him. Thus, both the book and the movie exquisitely detail the various characters and help the audience understand who is undergoing the transformation while pursuing the object of their desire.

In conclusion, Orlean and Jonze convey the theme of people pursing a passion and experiencing transformation. The premise of people’s transformation by their passion reflects various literary nonfiction forms, namely, a sense of place, personal experience, and biographical sketch. The warmth and humidity of Florida allows orchids to bloom. This enables Laroche’s pursuit of orchids. Orlean’s interaction with Laroche transforms her and helps her realize the importance of passion in her life. Laroche’s wild passion to possess rare orchids drives him reckless, he attempts to steal them from a preserve, and he gets caught red handed. In the movie, Jonze humorously depicts Charlie, a screenwriter, suffering from a writer’s block, fervent to adapt The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. Jonze describes Charles’ struggle with his own neuroticism. Charles determination to accurately depict the book into a screenplay helps him it to realize that he needs to pursue his hearts delight without worrying about other people’s opinion of him. Each work helps the reader understand the characters and the theme in the other. In both the works, the various characters display flaws and problems but in the end, their pursuit of a passion results in their transformation, which wows the audience.

Works Cited

Orlean, Susan. The Orchid Thief. New York: Random, 1998.
Minot, Stephen. Literary Nonfiction: The Fourth Genre. NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.
Adaptation. Dir. Spike Jonze. Perf. Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper. 2002. DVD. Sony Pictures, 2003.