Grenouille Becomes God in Perfume: Patrick Suskind’s Perfume

1199 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Brief introduction on perfume

Patrick Suskind’s Perfume takes place during Enlightenment Period France, and follows the life of a perfumer, Grenouille, who possesses a particular sense of smell and traverses throughout France on a journey to create the perfect scent. Suskind embraces Enlightenment ideals when Grenouille challenges the power of God in response to Grenouille’s attainment of control over his destiny and the destiny of others in Perfume. Suskind portrays Grenouille as all facets of God, who embodies the characteristics of Creator, Savior, and Destroyer. The struggles Grenouille encounters throughout Perfume relate to the conflicts God must resolve throughout The Bible. Grenouille creates what, to him, appears pure and innocent, and through his creation he attempts to save those that have failed. When Grenouille’s goals come under threat, he retaliates and takes control of his own destiny; he destroys in order to ensure the fulfillment of his goals.
When Grenouille creates, he does so with the intent to make a pure and perfect substance as God does with his own creations. God creates Earth in seven days perfect and pure, with his own design (New King James Version, Gen. 1.1-31). Grenouille spends seven years in a cave where no smell can overwhelm him and he creates his own personal world of scent. After Grenouille has created his utopia, Suskind writes, “Grenouille the Great . . . and soon there was not a cranny left . . . he had not thrown a seed of fragrance . . . the seed began to germinate and sprout, bringing forth shoots to gladden his heart” (50). Suskind gives Grenouille godly control over a world that has nothing. Grenouille attempts to make his utopia, but even after seven years of creation, he soon realizes that he gains little in his pr...

... middle of paper ...

...o a higher class level.
These Enlightenment ideals become the embodiment of Grenouille as he progresses through France on a journey to fulfill a destiny he creates for himself. Grenouille becomes God throughout Perfume. Grenouille’s methods and actions allude to the ways God takes control of destiny and lead the people away from impurities. The three facets represent the idea of Grenouille taking a godly role among people. Grenouille creates, saves, and destroys and overall makes the lives of the people better in his lifetime.

Works Cited

Genesis. The Bible: The New King James Version. Nashville: T. Nelson, 1984. Print.
Mark. The Bible: The New King James Version. Nashville: T. Nelson, 1984. Print.
Matthew. The Bible: The New King James Version. Nashville: T. Nelson, 1984. Print.
Numbers. The Bible: The New King James Version. Nashville: T. Nelson, 1984. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Theme Of Existentialism In Grendel

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    Grendel, a book written by John Gardner, retells the epic of Beowulf from the perspective of a lonely monster who struggles to find his purpose. By peering into the life and perspective of Grendel, Gardner encapsulates the themes of, “form is function” and nihilism vs. existentialism. These themes coincide with Gardner’s childhood. On their family farm, Gardner had a cultipacker, a machine that crushes dirt clumps and creates a smooth seedbed. One day he drove the cultipacker with his siblings Sandy and Gilbert. The engine ran out of gas and jolted on a downward incline. Gilbert was thrown out of the cultipacker. It continued to move forward as the huge machine was on an incline, crushing Gilbert’s head (Stanton). At just 12 years old, Gardner

    Read More

  • Rise Above the Misery in Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

    1757 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rife with different themes in every storyline, Les Misérables entices critics to examine the numerous themes and speculate as to their meanings. These themes that they elicit from the text include, but are not limited to, fate dictating the course of one’s life, good works saving every soul, evil being the root of all of the problems of humanity, society weighing a person down, misfortune being the sole cause of faults in a person, love being the meaning of life, and the ability of love to alter a person. Many who read the novel are enamored with the many themes and agree that they are all explicitly explored. First, according to the critic Reeves, one can try to shape his own destiny all that he wants by “[chiseling] the ‘mysterious block’” from which his fate is made. However, no matter...

    Read More

  • Who Is Marie-Neige's Character In Divisadero

    805 Words  | 2 Pages

    When Marie-Neige believed that she was in the extreme depth of hopelessness, the unexpected generosity and kindness from Lucien allowed her to re-evaluate herself regarding her previous negative outlook of life. Lucien’s decision to purchase her property and sign it under her name after realizing all the pain and miseries Marie-Neige experienced instigated a substantial change within Marie-Neige’s character. This revelation caused Marie-Neige to transform from someone who had “been given nothing in her life, on even the slightest scale” (pg.6) to someone who began to “recognize the sudden lightness” (pg.6) in life by discovering the limitless possibilities of her own farm. Because of Lucien’s compassion and kindness, Marie-Neige realized how such a simple act could greatly positively influence her view of the world. This feeling of hope and optimism has allowed her to destroy the barriers encompassed around her poverty-stricken life and discover her true aspirations in society filled with endless opportunities. In addition, the allusion to Cornelius also demonstrates the importance of the farm to Marie-Neige since it is an essential for her way of living. When Marie-Neige was still living a poverty-stricken, difficult life, she attempted to cultivate her plants successfully in order to one day be able to enter society and forever leave her destitute, poor state. Now that she has rights to her own land, she believes that she is now able to “enter the world of the grower of the black tulip” (pg. 6). This means now that Marie-Neige has possession of her own property, she will be able to properly tend her own flowers by herself and compete within the mainstream, competitive society while abandoning her previous sufferings and

    Read More

  • Analysis Of 'Grendel'

    758 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a result of not receiving help when the bull was attacking him, Grendel develops a new theory: “I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the universe, blink by blink” (Gardner 21-22). Grendel’s questioning of his way of living marks a transformation of Grendel into a mature character who gains knowledge from his experience with the bull, concluding that the world revolves only around him. The utilization of ‘I’ portrays that his growing isolation from the absence of his mother during the bull attack is what permits him to believe that he is superior to everyone else and the only worthy creature to exist. This foreshadows his ultimate purpose in life which is to kill mankind. Grendel, as the creator of the world, holds the ultimate power to decide who will live, lacking the perspective that there is a higher force other than himself. In other words, the experience Grendel acquires from the bull attack enables him to mature and obtain insight on the truth of his

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Grendel

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    John Gardner’s Grendel portrays a monster searching for his purpose in life. The characters know the meaning of their lives, but Grendel tries to discover his role and what life has to offer him. Grendel discovers his identity through other characters’ actions and beliefs. In Grendel, John Gardner illustrates the contrasting views of each character to show their view of society and the influence they have on Grendel.

    Read More

  • The Goldfinch Analysis

    1153 Words  | 3 Pages

    Theo and the young Narrator similarly discover the revelatory capacity of art through a single pivotal painting and author respectively, both which become significant motifs in either text. Tartt utilizes an existent painting ‘The Goldfinch’ as a fixed point of reference, which, for both Theo and the reader provides a sense of reality and constancy ‘rais[ing him] above the surface’ of an otherwise tumultuous childhood. Whereas Proust uses a fictional author, ‘Bergotte’, to communicate the universality of art, and invite the reader, through the vivid immediacy with which the Narrator’s early reading experiences are described, to participate in his epiphanic discovery that art can translate ‘imperceptible truths which would never have [otherwise] been revealed to us’ (97). Artistic imagery becomes a motif in Proust’s descriptions of scenes of domesticity and nature. In a scene recounting Francoise ‘masterful’ preparation of a family meal the Narrator describes asparagus in the technical language of painting as ‘finely stippled’ provoking an association between his observations of asparagus and the creation of a painting. By forming this improbable link he elevates unremarkable asparagus to the ‘precious’ status of art in the eyes of the reader. Proust’s presentation of his Narrator’s ‘fascination’ and pleasure at their ‘rainbow-loveliness’, forces the reader to consider asparagus with unfamiliar and attentive appreciation, conveying the idea that art can uncover the overlooked beauty of the mundane. Though Theo reveals a far more cynical view of ordinary life as a ‘sinkhole of hospital beds, coffins and broken hearts’ Tartt conveys the similar belief in art’s capacity to create a ‘rainbow-edge’ of beauty between our perceptions and the harshness of reality. In the most

    Read More

  • God

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    dry lands; he creates all wildlife, animals and people. The story starts in the Garden of Eden, in

    Read More

  • Grendel's Search For Meaning Essay

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the beginning Grendel’s perspective of himself leads to various encounters that help him discover the meaninglessness to his very own existence. From the beginning through many centuries of pondering Grendel has come to the idea that the world consists entirely of Grendel and not-Grendel. Thus Grendel begins his search for meaning of his very own life with an existential philosophy, the belief that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. While Grendel’s overall perspective of nature is that of mindless and mechanical machine, he believes that he is a separate entity from this machine. Furthermore he holds the philosophy that he himself is a god like creature that “blink by blink” creates the world. This philosophy undermined when Grendel notices that events occur before he can think them into existence. Grendel witnesses the death of a deer by the hands of humans: “Suddenly time is a rush for the hart: head flicks, he jerks, his front legs buckling, and he’s dead. He lies as still as the snow hurtling outward around him to the hushed world’s rim. The image clings to my mind like a

    Read More

  • Grendel the Existentialist Monster

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    The monster Grendel is the ironic eye through which the action is viewed and from this perspective he provides the reader with never-ending examples of buffoonery and self-parody. Often his claims reveal the Sartrean component in his makeup: "I create the whole universe, blink by blink"(Gardner 22). Gardner,of course,wants to make a point here about solipsism. There is more to the objective world than Grendel's ego. Naturally the universe still exists when Grendel closes his eyes. Likewise, when Grendel says "I observe myself observing what I observe", (Gardner 29) ,he reminds us of Sartre's view of the self-reflective nature of consciousness. As he said in his interview, Gardner planned to parody Sartre's ideas in Being and Nothingess in these sections of the novel.

    Read More

  • Comparing the Act of Creation in Grendel and Frankenstein

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Grendel, nearly all of the characters are driven to shape the world to their ideas. Hrothgar spends his life crafting a government. Grendel's mother is described as loving her son "not for myself, my holy specialness, but for my son-ness, my displacement of air as visible proof of her power (138)." Both Grendel and the Shaper constantly seek the ability to reshape reality with words. While they have differing motives, all of these acts of creation give power and significance to the creator. As Baby Grendel desperately convinces himself, it is the act of observing and commenting on what is outside that makes one real: "I understood that, finally ...

    Read More

  • Comparing The Theogony and Creation in Genesis

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...of the entire Earth and Humans shown in the text of the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”. God approved of what he had made and felt it was the perfect creation of Earth.

    Read More

  • Motif of Violence in The Stranger by Albert Camus

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    Meursault, an unemotional, a moral, sensory-orientated character at the beginning of the book, turns into an emotional, happy man who understands the "meaninglessness" and absurdity of life by the end of the book. Meursault realizes that the universe is indifferent to man's life and this realization makes him happy. He realizes that there is no God and that the old codes of religious authoritarianism are not enough to suffice man's spiritual needs. One has to create one's won meaning in an absurd, meaningless world.

    Read More

  • Themes In Metamorphosis, The Stanger By Albert Camus And The Perfume

    1186 Words  | 3 Pages

    Isolation is a key themes in The Stranger. Grenouille is alienated since the moment he is born by being scentless. For example, Jeanne Bussie, the wet nurse who was first appointed to care for him, rejects him for being scentless. She even insists that he is evil and possessed by the devil. It is said that he could never be loved because human love is produced in response to personal scent, and thus he never understood or felt love himself. His superior olfactory abilities also caused isolation, he was seen as unusual when he was young, and other kids always kept their distance. Moreover, on his way to Grasse he began to only travel by night due to the absence of human scent, until he encountered a cave where people and human habitation could not be smelled whatsoever and happily decided to stay there for seven long years.

    Read More

  • Gargantua and Pantagruel

    914 Words  | 2 Pages

    After reading the story I feel the meaning is only to express the authors dislike for French society. The story attempts to dissect and embarrass the upper class of the society. Rabelais seems to cover all the bases by including his thoughts on the church, education, and French fashion. He goes about insulting these categories with such care and passion it gets his point across with dark humor. I feel that the author definitely accomplished everything he wanted with Gargantua and Pantagruel.

    Read More

  • Gattaca: A Philosophical Analysis

    1070 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Gattaca, the metaphysical reality of human free will is articulated through Vincent’s unpredicted achievement. Modern idealists, such as Berkley, believe that reality consists of ideas rather than physical objects (Velasquez 190). Jerome reveals his own idealistic mindset through an intimate conversation with Vincent, in which he lessens the significance of his physical contribution to their mutually dependant relationship and proclaims the necessary role of Vincent’s nonphysical one. Jerome says, ‘I only lent you my body. You lent me your dream’. Sartre, an existentialist philosopher, believed that every individual is responsible for determining his or her individual purpose (Velasquez 96). Although authorities at Gattaca possess a rigidly materialistic outlook (displayed through their unquestioning reliance on genetic analysis as a means of determining competenc...

    Read More

More about Grenouille Becomes God in Perfume: Patrick Suskind’s Perfume

Open Document