Perfume Grenouille Character Analysis

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In Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, a complex and unique Bildungsroman novel, Patrick Süskind develops the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille and his bizarre encounters with the dissimilar human world. Despite the setting of the novel, 18th century France, the author satirizes characteristics of both the anti-hero Grenouille, as well as the characters with which he interacts that mirror those of his personal time period: Germany, post-WWII. As the plot unfolds, Süskind forces the reader to blissfully watch on as the country’s population throughout the novel succumbs to seemingly obvious stunts and popularized antics. In this unusual novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Süskind offers a rigid appraisal of the gullibility of humankind through the recurring use of symbolism and allegories …show more content…

When Grenouille’s mother is decapitated for infanticide, he is left in the custody of wet nurse Jeanne Bussie. Only several weeks after her employment, the nurse adamantly pursues Father Terrier with countless issues regarding baby Grenouille - she refuses to care for him anymore. Bussie claims “he’s possessed by the devil”, and that “he [Grenouille] doesn’t smell at all” (10). Simply because the child doesn’t possess the typical “baby smell”, the wet nurse is so convinced that the child is of the devil that she refuses to watch over him anymore, and leaves Father Terrier to watch over the child. At first the man finds her assumption ridiculous, but once Grenouille begins to interact with his surroundings, he is almost immediately convinced. According to Father Terrier, “the child seemed to be smelling right through his skin, into his innards. His most tender emotions, his filthiest thoughts lay exposed to that greedy little nose” (17). The priest no longer saw Grenouille as an infant, but as a strange and foreign creature that lay at his feet, and “he would have hurled it like a

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