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Grenouille A Sociopath Essay

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The novel focuses on a young man named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille and his murders of throughout the novel, in order to take the essence of their aroma and make a perfume out of it. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how Jean-Baptiste Grenouille can be said to be sociopath and show sociopathic tendencies. In all actuality, no sane human really has the mentality of slaughtering another human being for their smell, especially for a personal gain, like the perfume in Baptiste's case, so naturally the person is usually identified as a psychopath or at least a human with psychopathic tendencies, or a sociopath. The mentality of Grenouille could be compared to that of a drug addict. Said addicts know it is wrong to be doing such things but because it gives them a sense of power over their lives, something where they could have little to no control over, it makes them not want to stop or even care to. Many people argue that Grenouille is a psychopath instead of a sociopath, which in any case could be justified but there are just more facts that state and justify why Grenouille is more likely to fit into the category of sociopath instead of psychopath, …show more content…

A sociopath, by definition, is a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience or it could also be said that sociopaths do know the difference between wrong and right, but do not particularly care about it. Throughout the novel, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille did indeed show signs of being a sociopath. After his first kill, he kept killing for personal purposes, to make the perfume. When he was an orphan under Madame Gaillard, although she was a cold and emotionally detached woman, she was still paid to take care of the orphans and teach them wrong from

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