Between the beautiful bloom and scent of amaranth, lavender, acadia and the most precious fumes that have ever been sensed lies a story of a gifted boy - murderer in heart. Patrick Süskind’s novel „Perfume” was published in 1985, which, I believe, is one of the most imaginative and eccentric story ideas I have ever read. This cross-genred novel is one of the most successful German publications of the 20th century alongside with Erich Maria Remarque’s novels and roughly twenty years later – in 2006 Tom Tykwer adapted Grenouille’s story for cinemas.
For a brief rundown of the plot – the story is based in eighteen century Paris, where an orphan named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille grows up. For a long time he does not learn to speak and although he does not have a natural smell of his own it is enough for him to smell the ambient and to allow all the odours of the world flew through him. The reason why it is so hard for him to harmonize with people or at least to properly blend in is because of his remarkable and unusually keen sense of smell – and it is not an unnatural sign of his to detect odours in things that average people would not believe to have scent at all. As Grenouille trains to be a perfumer he is determined to make the utopian scent that could place him into God’s place. Nonetheless, the ‘perfect perfume’ in his eyes is created of the scents of thirteen virginal girls since is the only way to preserve and obtain their natural smells.
Patrick Süskind, the author of this outstanding novel, reveals the story bit by bit without losing the control of his protagonist Grenouille’s intense and heightened thoughts, feelings and expressions, while not forgeting to replete the story with immense descriptions of various scents and odo...
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... believe that the movie is a great supplement of the book, even with its’ imperfections, and I definately have seen much worse and deceptive adaptions of a book.
Personally I encountered beautiful lines and sentences from „Perfume” that could be used as ravishing every-day quotes and most probably my exemplar of the book has more highlighted pages than plain ones just because I can connect these underlined quotes with some period of time from my life, and quite often I want to read some of the pages again and again to inspire or just to get that delightful feeling and goosebumps and the same goes for the movie – I could find some quotes which was not taken from the book only because it lacked monologues and dialogues. In the movie there were moments which you can watch over and over and still would not get bored nor of the acting, nor of the same placement.
This is my view on the movie and book. I likes the movie better the book because the
In his 1984 novel Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins presents a narrative that rivals the often fantastical tales told in myth. Using classical mythology as a foundation, and, in particular, providing a loose adaptation of The Odyssey by Homer, Robbins updates and modifies characters and concepts in an effort to reinforce the importance of the journey of life and the discovery of self. Like the ancient myth-makers, Robbins commands the reader’s attention with outrageous situations and events while at the same time providing characters that the reader can relate to and learn from.
Mersault, the narrator and protagonist, is The Stranger. He has cut himself off from the world. As he narrates the novel is divided into two parts. In part 1 he deals with everyday affairs except for two important events. At the beginning of the novel his mother has died. He is struggling to make ends meet, therefore he sent his mother to a nursing home in Marengo. This has brought criticism from the community. At the funeral he does not feel the grief as is expected nor is he concerned with the formalities of mourning. The next day Mersault starts an affair with Marie, who at one time been a typist in his office. They have a wonderful time eating, swimming, watching movies and making love. People, i.e. society is aghast that he has not observed what is considered a proper mourning period for his mother.
The movie is, most likely, done well enough to intrigue its intended audience. It captured the theme and story line of the book. It falls short, though, when compared to the beautiful, sensitive and contemplative prose of Natalie Babbitt. One could only hope that a viewing of the film will lead the watcher to try the book and be delighted all the more.
In the Süskind's novel, Perfume, Grenouille is seen as a monster. Grenouille was the agent of all deaths including the 24 women, his mother, and all his caretakers. He abused the power of scent and smell ,and had a detestation for all forms of life. He is a monster because of his actions, thoughts and behaviour. It was society that made him into this beast because they all saw him as something different yet, all he truly ever wanted was love, something he was forever denied.
Grenouille dominates the authoritative figures in his life from a submissive position. At his birth Grenouille recognizes the necessity of bowing to those above him in order to survive. As his mother gives birth and “wishes only for the pain to stop” so she could “live for a while yet and perhaps even marry,” Grenouille lays silent under the fish stand (Suskind 5). This pattern continues as Grenouille fights to find his identity among the rest of the world. Moving on from his mother, Grenouille quietly observes all the rules set by Madame Gaillard, meekly allows Grimal to treat him as a slave, and willingly grants Baldini’s life goal of becoming the best perfumer in all of France. By allowing himself to act submissively, Grenouille earns the trust of the authorities, which gives him the freedom to become a tick. For instance, Grimal sees only the profit in Grenouille whose “Life was worth precisely as much as the work he could accomplish” (Suskind 31). Once Grenouille overcomes his bout of anthrax, Grimal allows Grenouille more freedom. Grenouille maintains his submissiveness, waiting for the right time to strike, just as a tick waits for the right moment to bite.
In conclusion, details involving the characters and symbolic meanings to objects are the factors that make the novel better than the movie. Leaving out aspects of the novel limits the viewer’s appreciation for the story. One may favor the film over the novel or vice versa, but that person will not overlook the intense work that went into the making of both. The film and novel have their similarities and differences, but both effectively communicate their meaning to the public.
..., Grenouille does not allow anyone to suspect that he is someone other than an eager journeyman. Süskind successfully uses Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, among other characters, to make his reader believe that humans are deceptive creatures led mostly by their greedy desires.
In exposition, the diction Suskind uses was densely connoted – not only to provide descriptions of the birthplace of the protagonist but rather, it serves as a tool to incite disgusted feelings and pity from the readers towards the protagonist’s birth events. Moreover, Suskind emphasises that Grenouille does undergoes childhood trauma (despite being born emotionless) and that the cause of trauma originates from the characteristic of the society he was born into. Undoubtedly, it was something that the protagonist has absolute no control over it. Although there were no traumatized-symptoms were shown by Grenouille as the story continues to progress, the effects would linger in the mind of the readers rather than the protagonist himself. Through characterization and plot events, Suskind begets more sympathy from his readers by also introducing the protagonist’s mother - whom abandons a child in a fish market as she, previously has done similarly with the other four. Furthermore, Grenouille’s unwanted birth event was described as well – as his mother wanted to put the “revolting birth...
The book and the movie were both very good. The book took time to explain things like setting, people’s emotions, people’s traits, and important background information. There was no time for these explanations the movie. The book, however, had parts in the beginning where some readers could become flustered.
“So close that I could smell his aftershave—it was a delicious, fruitlike smell that day” (pg.7)This quote is a clear indication of Balram’s, more than friendly response to Mr. Ashok. His use of the words “that day” show that it wasn’t the first time he intentionally took a whiff of Ashok’s aftershave. Perfume has been used in many different cultures as a way to seduce and grab the attention of someone of interest. When Balram inhaled Mr. Ashok’s aftershave, he, in a sense, took bits of Mr. Ashok inside of him. “ The cologne from his skin—a lovely cologne—rushed into my nostrils for a heady instant while the smell of my servant’s sweat rubbed off onto his face”(pg. 65-66). Once more, Mr. Ashok’s smell crawls into Balram, however this time it is a combination of skin, sweat, and cologne. The mixture is something that neither men can ignore nor bother to forget. It was in this instance that the inconvenient attraction between both men began.
For this, Grenouille collects the scents of many young women by encasing their odor in a waxy oil substance after he murders them. These scents are used as the key building blocks for his ultimate scent. This procedure is an example of collectivism in the novel. This concept is shown in other ways in the novel. The primary instance is that when Grenouille is first learning the ways of perfumery. He discovers that it takes thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of individual rose petals to create a diminutive sized volume of concentrated essence of perfume. This, along with endless hours of hard labour, he learns, is all required to create this almost trifling yet potent amount of essence. This essence absolue is described by Grenouille when he states that it “no longer had a sweet fragrance. Its smell was almost painfully intense, pungent, and acrid. And yet one drop, when dissolved in a quart of alcohol, sufficed to revitalize it and resurrect a whole field of flowers”(177). It is a reflection of Grenouille’s goal to formulate an all encompassing human scented perfume and therefore a classic example of collectivism. This idea of collectivism is portrayed as a
Scent within the novel Perfume by Patrick Suskind has been regarded as a supernatural element that transcends the physical realm and into the spiritual. In 18th Century France, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with the supernatural ability to smell, while lacking his own individual odour. The power of scent is revealed to have manipulative qualities that shape the way an individual perceives someone based off odour. Suskind uses the characters of Grenouille and Madame Gaillard to convey the effect that scent has on the emotional spirituality of humans as both have a disability with their olfactory sense. Grenouille utilises the power of scent to create his own perfume which emphasizes scent possessing qualities beyond the natural world.
...Grenouille goes on to kill other people because he retains no emotion connection to death and that develops during his childhood. He develops this indifference from his surroundings. Grenouille lacks a normal sense of emotional connection to death because everyone around him dehumanizes him. He does not fit into the normal humanistic life therefore, the people who surround him during his childhood, all conclude that the only solution to get rid of the discomfort of his presence, is to get rid of him or kill him. Süskind implements the dehumanization of children and its connection with death in order to set up background for Grenouille’s mental state and strives to retrieve the understanding of the reader the true reason as to why Grenouille goes out to kill others.
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.