Suskinds Perfume: An Analysis - Essay Example

SUSKIND’S PERFUME: AN ANALYSIS Perfume (1986) is a popular novel written by Patrick Suskind. It depicted the tale of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a massmurderer who killed dozens of beautiful, nubile virgins in Grasse, France in his experiment to concoct the perfect perfume. The theme of the narrative may appear simple at first glance but the story has an underlying depth and novelty. There are several reasons for this but the most important is that the tale is an interesting study and discourse of human nature. This important theme was explored with Suskind combining elements of reality and fantasy into one credible and believable tale, especially when the book has been originally published during a period dominated by rational thinking and the Enlightenment. Realism and Fantasy In Perfume’s Grenouille, a character is created who is repulsive and ugly but that he had an uncanny skill to recognize beauty more than most. The characterization is very realistic, with Suskind painstakingly depicting the period and setting including the norms, prevailing philosophies, and so forth, making his fantastic claim about Grenouille’s uncanny olfactory ability believable. Grenouille’s apprenticeship, for instance, demonstrated the fidelity by which the author described the commercial system in France during the period. Then, there was the information about the odor of a female virgin as one with potential to capture the very smell of desirability. Another case in point is the scrutiny on Grenouille in the eyes of the pseudo-scientist Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse, who opined that the poor man’s spotted and scarred body is caused by the corruptive effects of gases on the body (141). The notion was of course silly, but that given how ugly Grenouille’s body looked, such depiction, in some perverse way, seem to actually make sense. Together, these information demonstrated the interplay of what is realistic and what is fictitious and that it is strong enough for Suskind to suggest a certain man without any odor whatsoever, and his readers certainly believed it is the most natural thing in the world. All in all, such device was employed in order to effectively present Quest for Sublime Perfume is about fairness – meting out punishment for bad deeds committed. It is actually a classically structured horror literature in the tradition of crime genre, glossed over by employing a unique narrative approach. Grenouille committed his killing spree and in the end, the very reason for his murders was what caused his destruction as well – poetic justice. But if one paid closer attention, there are several underlying themes explored that are more important than the previously mentioned plot. These themes were what Suskind has imparted in his use of duality – the realistic and fantastic elements, revulsion and sympathy, and other ironies – in the novel. It is in this respect, wherein Perfume resembled two other known novels published in postwar Germany – Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann and The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. Suskind used Perfume as commentary on the grim irony of society. This is reflected for instance in Suskind use of smell as a narrative device. When the reader expected pleasant olfactory depictions, he is assaulted by narrations about how bad the smell is such as in Paris where the streets stank of “manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchen of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat,” while people reeked from sweat and filthy clothes and “from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onion, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease.” The narrative is also a discourse of different aspects of sublime in the backdrop of the rational/Kantian eighteenth century. It is a discourse on the fate of an artist who has to suffer the tragedy of being someone who can identify and recognize what is sublime to the point of reproducing it or its message through his or her work but cannot actually experience them as how others do due to his awareness of his limitations. Twisted Objective Consider the life of Grenouille. He was born deformed, grotesque, whose malevolence and insanity could qualify him as the quintessential evil figure. For years, he has lived a hard life and in isolation. He first encountered a sublime experience when he experienced a highly pleasurable rage and in rehearsing scents all by himself. Grenouille “quivered with excitement, his body writhed with voluptuous delight and arched so high that he slammed his head against the roof of the tunnel, only to sink bank slowly and lie there lolling in satiation” (124-125). The experience was “too pleasant” making Grenouille experience a feeling akin to some psychological and emotional expansion or religious ecstasy that he longed for the same experience to happen again. Indeed when Grenouille met Laure, the woman’s “fatally wonderful scent” made him “hot with rapture and cold with fear” (169). For Grenouille, finding the scent the second time is impossible that the successful act made him realize that he could do something beyond what is possible. It was this realization that led him to his quest. Unfortunately, while the first experiences were sublime, the succeeding events became another story as his objective was transformed from merely enjoying and experiencing what is beautiful into achieving mastery over human souls by trying to recreate such beauty and much more, to the point of trying to surpass the very nature itself. He destroyed and deconstructed beauty in order to recreate what is sublime. After Laure, Grenouille killed two dozens more women and blended their odors into a “diadem of scent” (193). The offshoot is that he was able to successfully create a perfume and that those who smell it would fall in love despite the fact that Grenouille is the same malevolent and ugly little man. Unfortunately, in the end, he was devoured and torn down by the very people whose adoration and desire, he has craved for a long time. As he was being torn apart, he felt anxious instead of the satisfaction from his triumph. The books states: Yes he was Grenouille the Great! Now it had become manifest. It was he, just as in his narcissistic fantasies of old, but now in reality. And in that moment he experienced the greatest triumph of his life. And he was terrified (292). Suskind was able to reconcile realism and fantastic fiction because such combination is the only device that could effectively capture the uncanny, which is the foundation of the desired effect and themes the novel wanted to convey. With these two elements, the story was able to access and demonstrate the realms of fear, illusion, ecstasy, among other emotional and psychological responses to underscore the sublime experience, among other themes that Suskind wanted his readers to know. In addition, they also reinforced the achievement of complexity and darkness of the narrative, making the prospect of the readers feeling repulsed and sympathetic at the same time. Conclusion The story of the protagonist is tragic. Out of all his deficiencies, such as his obvious insanity, and the impunity in killing his victims, they also contributed to Suskind’s allegorical critique that embedded Western aesthetics in the dialectics of the period. Again the duality device is at work here. The realistic and fantastic elements served to reinforce descriptions and analyses and without which, Suskind could not have successfully completed writing an excellent novel and also deliver his message and the lessons he wanted to impart to his readers. Bibliography Suskind, Patrick. Perfume. J.E. Woods (trans.), New York" Washington Square Press, 1986. Read More