Patrick Suskind's Perfume Character Analysis
1124 WordsNov 12, 20175 Pages
Patrick Süskind’s seminal 1985 novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, achieves that rare feat of creating a main character who is both the protagonist and antagonist or in another phrase an anti-hero. The novel discusses the life of Grenouille who became an infamous criminal who lived in the significant change and unrest in Paris in 18th century France and had experienced life chiefly through his highly developed sense of smell. Süskind’s did a marvelous job in using personality traits that can be easily be distinguished to an actual serial killer. He has also been more in-depth within Grenouille’s personality by adding common mental disabilities and psychological abuse that the majority of infamous killers faced throughout their lives.…show more content… Without bearing an odor, he was titled as unidentified and abominable. This led him the absence for someone to guide him and comprehending the difference of what is considered morally right or wrong. However, unlike Grenouille, Ed Gein isolation was due to the fault of parental guidance. Gein lived a repressive and solitary life on his family homestead with a weak brother, violent unemployed alcoholic father, and domineering mother. His mother, moved into a desolate location to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons. ("Ed Gein: Real American Psycho." Ed Gein: Real American Psycho.) Gein only left the premises to go to school and she blocked any attempt he made to pursue friendships. The mother, who was a fanatical Lutheran, drummed into her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drink and the belief that all women (herself excluded) were prostitutes and lubricious. When she died, her son was a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor, still emotionally enslaved to the woman who had tyrannized his life. (Ed Gein Biography and Crime Scene Photos." Wisconsin Sickness.)
In addition, Both Gien and Grenouille also had the capability to manipulate others, one of the main symptoms that each sociopath carry. Grenouille manipulated Baldini so he can stay and work with him. He also manipulated the public and the government to pardon his crimes and Laure