Analyzing The Character of Jean Grenouille's as Depicted in Patrick Suskind's Story

The 18th century was a time when romanticism, the industrial revolution, and the age of enlightenment came into play. Patrick Suskind, the author, develops the story, Perfume, during this era and does a stupendous job in using imagery to set up the story’s background to the readers. Looking deeper into the novel, we see that the main protagonist, Jean Baptiste Grenouille, is not considered a “normal” person. He is considered an outcast to society, not fitting in with the likes of those around him and anywhere else in the world. The person he has become is due to the care he had received from others. His mother, Madame Gaillard, Baldini, and Grimal are the main people who helped “nurture” him and sculpted him into the person he became, even if it did not result into something positive. The development of Grenouille is affected by these people and how their actions were towards him. Perfume is able to build up into a plethora of twists and turns, starting from how he was raised, the obstacles he goes through, and how he overcomes them by using his supernatural gift.

The gift of scent is a gift that most humans are able to enjoy. Grenouille is blessed with this gift in a more cynical way, in which he uses it for wicked purposes. How did this all occur? Why was it used for evil? Being born in a fish stand and abandoned by your mother is a good place to start. No mother for Grenouille meant he has to be alone, no guidance into the right path, no teaching of morals and ethics, and no loving touch, care, no anything. The role of a nurturing, loving mother is gone immediately and Grenouille is left to fend for himself. He must teach his self how to become a “normal” person. Being born in the world without having any authority figure, Grenouille is then passed along wet nurses and a priest. Their reaction to this baby is one that foreshadows how the outcome of how he will be when he grows up.

Grenouille does not stay with them forever. He grows into a child, unlike a regular child; he is more secluded, quiet, and unnoticed. This is where the role of Madame Gaillard takes place and how she affected his childhood. Madame Gaillard becomes ignorant about Grenouille’s special gift and the children at the boarding house are simply repulsed by him. Due to circumstances of Grenouille spooking Gaillard, she then gives him up to a tanner named Grimal. Grimal plays a significant role towards his pre-pubescent stage in life. He works him like an animal each day, even when Grenouille would catch a man eating illness. Grenouille then meets Baldini, who is a master perfumer. He takes Grenouille under his wing as an apprentice and realizes how talented of a person he is. These people and their descriptions are just a gist of who they are and how they impact Grenouille’s life.

These are the characters that shaped Grenouille’s life in important ways since they are the ones who made certain decisions and “helped” him along his life whether it was in a positive or negative way. The theme of nurturing comes into play with these supporting characters. Their actions impacted Grenouille causing him to not be accepted by society since he was not taught right or wrong emotions, or raised properly. Madame Gaillard raised Grenouille when he was young child. Being brain damaged with a blow to the head, she has no sense of smell which did not stop her from raising Grenouille. Since Madame Gaillard was a woman of no compassion or love, Grenouille would be raised not knowing the regards of normal emotional development. He was simply given the basic needs for a child, which drove him to become an outcast to society. Madame Gaillard could be described as the mother figure that raises a child, but yet does not care or love him or her. From that point on he is then moved to the tanner named Grimal, with Grenouille being around his pre-pubescent age. Grimal, like Madame Gaillard treats him like an animal so to say, giving him only basic needs and work. Although Grenouille is a good worker, Grimal does not treat him any better and does not regret any action he may have done towards him. A brutal apprenticeship it is, but Grimal allows him to explore Paris in which he then opens his senses to all the odors that surrounds him. Grimal can be shown as the father figure in this example. Like a dad, he teaches the reigns of work and takes him in but he too, does not show Grenouille any source of positive affection. After that stage, he is taken in by a master perfumer named Baldini. Grenouille is taken in under an apprenticeship, which then shows how talented his is to Baldini. Unlike the others, Baldini is kinder than the likes of Madame Gaillard or Grimal put together. Sadly, Baldini only views Grenouille as an essential part for creating a new, successful perfume invention. This causes Grenouille to become an expert in creating perfumes to the point where he becomes much more talented and successful than Baldini. Baldini can be the probably the closest thing that Grenouille has had to any source of compassion or any type of affection.

These supporting characters all have a similar association with Grenouille, which was their way of “raising” Grenouille and their actions towards him. They helped shape Grenouille to who he was in the novel. Not only do they play an important role in his life but they also experience a strange outcome and similarity later on in their lives. After Grenouille moves from one place to another, the current person who took him in before, results in an unfortunate accident, causing them to their death such as Madame Gaillard and Grimal. This little motif insinuates to the reader, that the relationship they had with Grenouille was one that was not simply just a normal type. Now focusing back on Grenouille, he is now an adult. This is where an example of existentialism comes into play. Grenouille is finally able to choose his own path, and can freely roam the world as his own man with no one to worry about. Existentialism is an emphasis in which a man forms his essence in the course of his life resulting from his personal choices. Grenouille then makes the decision of having to live in a cave, to isolate his self from the smell of society for at least several years. With the choice he makes, he becomes more isolated causing him to be more mature. After living in the cave Grenouille reinvents himself, and sets off to finish his master scent. Setting off to kill more women in order to finish off his scent, he goes into town, masked in a scent he created which causes people to notice him and treat him like a normal human being since he has a certain scent. Another instance, before being hanged Grenouille is able to release another one of his concoctions, causing him to become free from being hung. He is able to change the view of others towards him with his perfumes.

Perfume is a novel in which the development of characters and relationships play hand in hand with each other. These two important is one of the more important themes. From Madame Gaillard, Grimal, Baldini and Grenouille, it is nice to know the correlation between the theme and the character itself. Suskind gives in-depth details and descriptions that can cause a feeling of a certain theme to a reader. With detail such as the setting of 18th century France, we can also better understand the context of the time. The Age of Enlightenment, which is the application of reason and rationality; The Age of Reason which tackled new ideas and thoughts that advocated the use of reason and individualism instead of tradition and established doctrine, were just a few examples of how the story was intertwined with historical movements and themes. Perfume is able to pose many ideas to the reader, and also can help them put together the pieces to understand who Grenouille is and how he became the person he was in the novel.