Perfume+PHILOS

Nature of love - Grenouille grows up without love hence Grenouille's desire to produce the perfect scent and desire for love is in fact caused by society denying him love and casting him as an outsider.
 * Love **

Comparing scent to love - Suskind's purpose of comparing scent to love is to portray love as something difficult to grasp or to express in language. Suskind denying Grenouille of scent also demonstrates that Grenouille is unlovable.

Love: When Grenouille sensed the delicate scent from the redheaded girl, it can be interpreted that he sensed the love which she inspired on people as people were “overwhelmed, disarmed, helpless before the magic of the girl” (171). The “magic” may be the love that Grenouille never received throughout his rough childhood, something which he desperately wanted to experience and possess.

Ambiguous word “love” – the term “love” is difficult to define in this novel because Suskind doesn’t associate love with the romantic and affectionate love one usually perceives as love. In fact, it is rather desire than love which, in this novel often ends in deception; shown through Grenouille’s desire to produce the perfect scent yet discovering that producing the perfume was not his ultimate purpose and society’s desire for Grenouille resulting in an orgy, yet waking up to feel shameful and humiliated. P. 236-246

Grenouille refuses to die - For someone that is deprived of everything, Grenouille has the will to continue living because he wants to satisfy his desire to create the perfect perfume. It is driven by curiosity and desire for love; however ironically, Grenouille is unable to give love because of his lack of emotion and inadequacy of language to express himself due to his inability to define anything he cannot smell.
 * Humanness **

Isolation – Ever since his childhood, Grenouille appeared to be isolated from people around him as he grew “ever more secretive” (26), roving alone through the city in search of new scents. He was also isolated from the children in the cloister because the children were simply “afraid of him” (23).

Humanness- In this chapter Grenouille is always described as inhumane, why would the author do so? Do you think he is human or just a twisted freak? In a way Grenouille is less human and has evolved, and adapted and in ways it seems as if Grenouille doesn't realize he's in the state he is and allows the audience to sympathic towards him. Grenouille is also seen as a human but without morals.

Isolation - Grenouille's hate of human develops as he gets further and further away from civilization. Before when he lived in the cities, he didn't notice the foul smells of humanity and tried to take everything in. However when he became more and more exposed to nature and began to leave civilization behind, he started developing a strong dislike to the human smell to the extent that it became anathema to him and forced him to hide in a cave on a mountaintop devoid of the smell of humans

Value of Human Life: Like the old times with Baldini, Grenouille was again used by people, the marquis in this case, to benefit themselves. When Grenouille was all well and good, the marquis used him to demonstrate his ridiculous theory and merely used him as a tool to gain status and popularity. However, when Grenouille deceived the marquis with illness, the marquis was terrified because his theory was not in jeopardy and all of a sudden, Grenouille’s life ironically seemed of immense value (146). Grenouille had finally fulfilled his purpose, but because he had done terrible things to get there, he was overcome with hatred and loathing for everyone in the world, and himself. God works in mysterious ways.

Connotation of word “miracle” – The mood of Grenouille’s execution is relaxed, as opposed to the agitated setting one would expect before an execution. Suskind describes the occurrence as a “miracle”, which is puzzling because a miracle is often depicted as wonderful or amazing; however, in this case portrays Grenouille as a supernatural and “incomprehensible” human being which isolates him from society. P. 235

Morals - Society is able to completely forget Grenouille and the murders that occurred in a matter of days which is obscure; however, it is because of society’s disbelief and their moral perceptions that they forget. It is ironic that society is moral yet can forget such an occurrence, and Grenouille who has no moral feels the same. P. 246-247.

Hygiene: This may seem trivial, however it is a big issue because it can often lead to disease and illness.
 * Scent **

Perception of smell: Grenouille appreciates smell because they remind him of experiences, like the smell of the tannery in Grasse, not necessarily because it "smells good".

Other people see smell simply because it "smells good", and do not even realize that the reason they see beauty in the girls such as Laure is because they are actually attracted to her smell.

“only now was she really dead for him, withered away, pale and limp as a fallen petal.”(220) To him w/o scent means truly dead. This explains why he was so pissed when he figured out he didn’t have any scent. To him every person w/ scent is a flower, either smelly or nicely smelled. When he found himself with no scent, he thought himself as dead, a fallen petal that didn’t even have the identity as a living thing.


 * Animal **

Use of Animal : Grenouille's pantherlike motions when possessing the "higher principle" and experiencing "happiness" for the first time depict an early stage of corruption, which continues to spread itself throughout the novel. It seems as though all the discriptions of Grenouille's action using animals in a negative connotation shows that Suskind has created a "monster" that loves possessing innocent and incredible beauty, but beauty is most superficially admired which is somewhat disappointing that Grenouille's obsessing over something so superficial.

Grenouille for the first time felt completely at peace when he crawled into the mountain; living like an animal, away from the constraints of having to pretend you're like everyone else. However a higher power sent a dream to Grenouille, which frightened him enough to contuinue on his path and fulfill his destiny of being a messiah of perfumery.

Grenouille is also characterized in this section as a beast more than a human being. The way in which he lives does not match up with our expctations of how a human being should be. For example, while normal humans need social contact to maintain a sane life, Grenouille is capable of living without having to socialize with anyone for seven years. He has also in a way evolved and adapted to his environment in a way that most of us can't even begin to imagine. For example, he eats live animals for food, lives in an inhabitable environment and is in complete isolation. However while he is characterized as inhuman in this section, a human aspect also reveals itself

False Superstition – Simply based on the fact that Grenouille doesn’t smell at all, Jeanne Bussie believed that Grenouille was “possessed by the devil” (10). Father Terrier, a man who “vigorously … combat … superstitious notions of the simple folk” (14), almost slipped out the word “devil” to describe Grenouille as he became afraid of the child’s action of “smelling right through his skin” (13).
 * Old and New **

Order – Madame Galliard “had a merciless sense of order and justice” (19). Growing up in her cloister, Grenouille would go on live a childhood deprived of love and love and the challenges he faced made him “as tough as a resistant bacterium and as content as a tick” (20).

Superstition: People are superstitious even though they are currently in the "age of reason"

Baldini refusing to accept changes in the society limits him from ever achieving what he wants, while Grenouille is able to think fast and move foward with ideas. This contrast between the two makes the latter more successful. The willingness to grasp new ideas and concepts instead of sticking with old ideas/traditions makes Grenouille more accomplished than Baldini in a much shorter period of time.

Because of Grenouille's potential, Baldini has forgotten about his Guild laws and started to think for his future. By forgetting his evening prayers, it can be ambiguous and also mean that he has forgotten his guild laws and is now thinking for himself, which is ironic because a few moments ago he was cursing Pelissier.

Conformity/Creativity - Baldini is described as someone who has never actually created a good perfume in his life but rather used other people's formulas. Once he becomes stuck and cannot create a perfume for the Count, he resorts to cheating and attempts to copy Pelissier's popular new perfume the "Amore and Pysche" which shows that he is a conformist and just trying to follow what is populart at the moment. On the other hand, Grenouille comes along and creates the best perfume that Baldini has ever smelled in just a few short minutes. Thereby Grenouille shows his genius and creativity by making something new and extraordinary.

Pursuit of new ideas and creations - Marquis lived for a new notion that he believed with all his heart, but turned out to be false. Meanwhile, Grenouille valued a never-seen-before creation that was equally creative, but realistic, only to realize this creation wasn't what he really longed for.

Experiences determined behavior (218): he thought about his past just at the moment he was succeeding. His past is now, in his mind, the source of his victory now, “it seemed to him as he looked back over it that he was a man to whom fortune had been especially kind, and that fate had led him down some tortuous paths, but that ultimately they had proved to be the right ones---how else would it have been possible for him to have found his way here…….” All his past adds up to his final behaviors, and determined his final success.


 * Creation and Destruction **

Creation and Destruction - under the guidance of Baldini, Grenouille learns the art of perfuming but while creating and learninng with "no particular interest" could mean he has another motive, and his creation of perfumes and other scents only lead to a destructive path.

Destruction of Lives - the motif of all of Grenouille's caretakers dying once he has left them including Grenouille's mother, Madame Gaillard, Grimal and later on Baldini himself. This could be used to symbolize Grenouille's ticklike characteristics in that when he has satisfied himself and learned everything he can possibly gain from his caretakers he leaves them much like how a tick sucks as much blood as possible from the host before moving on. The deaths could show that after that particular character's usefullness has run out to Grenouille, there is no point in living anymore and so just passes away.

Motif of Death: Similar to Baldini and Madame Galliard in the past, the marquis Taillade died after Grenouille’s departure as he “disappeared into the blizzard” at some fearsome mountain in an attempt to prove his theory (161). The motif of death suggests the tick-like characteristic of Grenouille in how he disposed of the people who he used to benefit himself (eg. Baldini to learn the perfumery techniques) after his separation from them.

People are objectified: Grenouille is not seen as a human in the book but rather as a tool and is passed from one person to another. Example: Grenouille has higher value after surviving anthrax.
 * Others **

From these chapters the theme good vs. evil (which is present through the whole novel) is established from Grenouille's infancy and chilhood stages. The "evil" monster, Grenouille, only at the age of a few months old, conquers the good priest, Father Terrier, by "staring intently with his nostrils" (page 16, an earlier example from the book) thus provoking a triumph for Grenouille, abandonment. Which I believe later connects to his actions of murdering, because in this section he is sold to Grimal, which is when the terror of murder begins.

Judgement of Others: When Grenouille puts on his newly created human odor, people are more aware of him and treat him as a human. People thought of Grenouille as innocent and normal when he first tries on his new scent, for example when he lifts up the child and the mother does not stop him but approves of this action, while inside he is planning the murders of the girls with nice smells. People in the book judge others by their physical traits and are often deceived.

Reversal of Roles -- Over the course of the story, Grenouille is described as a animal, but as the story progresses, theres a reversal of roles and instead of an animal, grenouille's status slowly ascends and eventually by the end he was the angel and the humans were described as beasts.