Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
theme of scent and smell in the novel perfume essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: theme of scent and smell in the novel perfume essay
In Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer the motif of scent and smell plays a huge role in the plot development of the novel; perhaps, it is the primary driving force behind it. Throughout the book, this motif is woven through the text as its own separate entity that pertains to the essential theme of the novel: olfaction. Süskind’s placement of the enhancement of smell brings Grenouille closer to the readers for the very fact that he is dehumanized by it. The technique of the author in using this motif is graceful in a manner that its presence does not display redundancy; rather it causes the reader to yearn each time it is shown for how the motif ties into the story holistically.
Süskind’s first display of “knitting” this motif into the text is through the dehumanization of the protagonist Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Within the first few pages of the book, this dehumanization is shown through the figure that brought Grenouille into the world: his mother. Due to her current circumstances, she does not even claim Grenouille and his siblings to be “real children” (p.5). For the very fact that they are illegitimate, no father is present in the home, and her inability to support them provokes her decision to deem them as fake. Although this scene does not pertain to the motif directly, Süskind utilizes this quote as the inception of the perpetual inhumane treatment of Grenouille his heightened olfaction capabilities.
The first use of this motif is when Grenouille’s childhood caregivers realize that he has no personal scent. The scene in which Father Terrier denigrates Jean Bussie for claiming that Grenouille is possessed by some demon portray since he has no personal scent shows how infants were treated as incomplete hum...
... middle of paper ...
...ncurrently reversing it on his victims. Giving Laure the attribute of having sap dehumanizes her to the fullest extent. This foreshadows Grenouille’s future murder victims as simply inhumane prey, nothing more. In this same passage, Süskind reveals just how finely tuned Grenouille’s hyperosmia really is. A year before when he was in Grasse, her scent was “sprinkled and dappled about” (p.190) but now, it is “a faint, smooth stream of scent that shimmered” (190). However, Grenouille then goes on to envisage the pinnacle of her scent to being “just twelve more months” and then he would be able to “imprison the wild flow of its scent” (p. 190). Süskind reveals in this passage – as well as the other murders- that Grenouille’s fondness of the scent of red-haired prepubescent girls not only portrays his disdain for humanity, but his lack of veneration for women as well.
The mood established by Edgar Allan Poe in his short story, "The Cask of Amontillado," plays a crucial role in conveying to the reader his underlying theme. For example, when Montresor, the narrator, st...
In response to living a desensitized Parisian lifestyle and a monotonous upbringing, Des Esseintes creates ideal settings that stimulate his “overfatigued senses”2. Des Esseintes is born into a family which had been inbred. This ...
A multitude of literary works possess much more information than an initial review reveals which is no accident on the author’s part. One author who epitomizes this method of writing is Nathaniel Hawthorne and his book The Scarlet Letter. Following a thorough review of the book, the underpinnings of literary elements reveal the way in which he incorporates his dynamic tone throughout the story, and, with extensive research, conclusions can be made as to why he wrote the novel. Exploring the latter topic allows analysts of all kind gain further insight on his character and its relation to the books content.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Fall of the House of Usher, the character Roderick Usher exhibits severe mental illness. Most of Poe’s writings are psychological in nature. The Fall of the House of Usher is a great example of this. Poe’s life was filled with many tragic events. The unpleasant outcome of his early years resulted in a great Gothic Romantic writer. He is a master of writing psychological thrillers, adding suspense and mystery in his stories. The topics of his writings are a concoction of unpleasant, austere, and grotesque things, thus the reader can be left feeling squeamish and susceptible. We are drawn into Poe’s stories by our intrinsic human nature of curiosity and intrigue. This paper gives examples of Poe’s literary style as we examine Roderick’s metal state through his words and appearance.
In the Harlequin romance Time of the Temptress, by Violet Winspear, the author seems to be trying to write an intelligent story of romance, bettered by its literary self-awareness. She fails on both counts. Winspear appears to recognize that more valued literature tends to involve symbolism and allusions to other works. It seems she is trying to use archetypes and allusions in her own novel, but her references to alternate literature and culture are embarrassingly obvious and awkward. Another inter-literary connection, though, is more difficult to notice unless the book is pondered -- something the typical romance reader is not likely to do. Although Winspear attempts to give her book literary value by tying it to Gone With the Wind, because of the limitations of her chosen genre, and her own apparent inabilities as a writer, she cannot grasp the depth that makes Gone With the Wind a highly regarded romance work.
In both ‘Eve Green’ and ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, the protagonists experience fear in many guises. Although traumatic events in both Eve and Antoinette’s lives do lead to moments of sudden, striking fear, fear is also presented as having the potential to be subtle and muted, and therefore, “haunting”. Fletcher and Rhys seem to suggest that this form of fear is more damaging to the psyche than fear in its more conspicuous manifestations, as it is more deeply intertwined with the characterisations of the protagonists, therefore allowing for the fear to “pervade” the novels. As a result, it could be argued that fear has an almost constant presence in each novel, particularly because fear is seemingly linked to other prominent themes in each novel.
Grenouille was the prime cause of death in the novel due to his upbringing at the hands of his caretakers. He murders 24 women and uses them in order to create the perfect perfume. "He loved this waiting [...] [and] loved it with the twenty-four other girls"( 218). Grenouille, while in extracting the scent of the girl' Laure, says he was used to the waiting time of the extraction. He claims that murdering these women was a pleasant experience and feels no guilt. Since the day Grenouille was born he had been murdering people directly and indirectly but Süskind adds a death in the beginning of the novel that foreshadows all that followed. "Unexpectedly, the infant under the gutting table begins to squall[...]since she confesses openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish,[...]she had[...]later[been]decapitated " (1). Grenouille, less than an hour old, murders hi...
The inclusions of gothic conventions of the same variety create a gothic genre for the novel. The use of the weather in the form of pathetic fallacies is particularly important in the way this forms the novel to be gothic. As the description of the weather evokes an atmosphere of suspense and the many connotations associated to the weather in particular the stereotype...
It is said that this book is considered as one of the most famous horror novels, if not the most famous one. The Gothic descriptions in the novel are very prominent at the beginning. The portrayal of the countryside of Transylvania, of the ruined Dracula Castle, etc, all provide the effect of horror in the sense of spooky and gloomy atmosphere, which you can obtain close at hand. Everything is so obvious. The originally beautiful scenes are changed by the writer¡¯s magnification of some specific details which provide certain effect on the readers. All of the above reminds how one¡¯s personal feelings can alter their attitudes towards what they see or what they experience. Sometimes when you are sad, everything look so depressing. It is like the whole world is against you. The sunset could be a fantastic scene when you are filled with joy but an extra source of sorrow when you are not in the mood. Harker is separated from her lovely fianc¨¦e to meet some foreign count in the exotic and unknown eastern world.
The purpose of writing this essay is to explain Grenouille’s psychopathy and sociopathy behaviors throughout the story. Grenouille’s strange behaviors were the main focus points he is known for. For instance, he was addicted to perfume and he was blind but he got around because of his strong sense of smell and he could predict the weather. In my opinion, Grenouille is both a psychopath and a sociopath, because of his weird behaviors and his lack of knowledge of knowing his wrong doings. This is because of his condition. A psychopath is the term used to refer a more serious disorder, linked to genetic traits, producing more dangerous individuals. A psychopath lacks empathy and a conscience. For example, when he killed the girl, he didn’t know
The narrator in Suskind’s Perfume has many different personas, similar to a kaleidoscopic view. The narrator transforms from a friend, to gossiper, to reader’s friend, to historian, journalist, an accomplice and eventually the reader learns that the narrator fundamentally is Grenouille. These changes are made progressively throughout the novel, which causes the reader to be too distracted with the storyline to realize that the narrator in Perfume is very untrustworthy.
Süskind sets his novel, Perfume; The Story of a Murderer, in the self-empowering period of the Enlightenment. However, his use of animalistic symbolism -especially referring his main character as a tick- as well as motifs of greed and darkness reflect the more maleficent side of humanity through the horridities human perform, and how humans seem to focus on their own desires.
In The Stranger, Camus portrays women as unnecessary beings created purely to serve materialistically and satisfy males through the lack of a deep, meaningful, relationship between Meursault and females. Throughout the text, the main character, Meursault, creates closer, more meaningful relationships with other minor characters in the story. However, in his interactions with females in this book, Meursault’s thoughts and actions center on himself and his physical desires, observations, and feelings, rather than devoting his attention to the actual female. Living in Algiers in the 1960s, Meursault originates from a post-modernist time of the decline in emotion. Meursault simply defies the social expectations and societal ‘rules’, as post-modernists viewed the world. Rather than living as one gear in the ‘machine’ of society, Meursault defies this unwritten law in the lackluster relationships between he and other females, as well as his seemingly blissful eye to society itself. In The Stranger, males, not females, truly bring out the side of Meursault that has the capacity for compassion and a general, mutual feeling relationship. For example, Marie and Meursault’s relationship only demonstrate Meursault’s lack of an emotional appetite for her. Also, with the death of Maman, Meursault remains virtually unchanged in his thoughts and desires.
Suskind introduces the readers to the fact that in the novel it is a person’s scent, which makes someone human and gives them an identity. Suskind establishes a setting where everything is described by scent. Scent is given utter importance as everything stank, “the streets stank, the courtyards, the people stank of sweat and unwashed clothes”, which in turn posed them their identity. Since Grenouille lacked the basic scent, it exemplified that he had no identity and lacked ‘humanness’. Since Grenouille wanted to be accepted, he used his skills and his perfume to deceive the society and making them believe them that he existed. But at the same time Suskind enables the readers to come across Grenouille’s real identity through the use of metaphors.
John Donne, an English poet and clergyman, was one of the greatest metaphysical poets. His poetry was marked by conceits and lush imagery. The Flea is an excellent example of how he was able to establish a parallel between two very different things. In this poem, the speaker tries to seduce a young woman by comparing the consequences of their lovemaking with those of an insignificant fleabite. He uses the flea as an argument to illustrate that the physical relationship he desires is not in itself a significant event, because a similar union has already taken place within the flea. However, if we look beneath the surface level of the poem, Donne uses the presence of the flea as a comparison to the presence of a baby, thus making the sub textual plot about aborting the baby.