In Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind, the protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, is described mainly through his supernatural ability to smell and his obsession with scents. Grenouille’s purpose in life was to create perfumes which evoked strong emotional reactions from the people surrounding him. However, most of the olfactory concepts illustrated in this fictitious story are exaggerated in comparison to actual scientific evidence. Throughout the novel, Grenouille often rummages through his memory to recall the scents of certain people, places, and objects. While isolated in his “blessed region” (Süskind, 121), Grenouille imagines himself as Grenouille the Great, living in a royal palace. Süskind’s extended metaphor
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Grenouille first became infatuated by a human’s scent at a celebration of the anniversary of King Louis XV 's coronation in Paris. During the firework show, Grenouille grew distracted as he followed an odor he explained he had to have, “...not simply in order to possess it, but for his heart to be at peace” (Süskind, 38). He traced the smell to its owner, a thirteen or fourteen year old girl picking plums in rue des Marais. The virgin became the first of Grenouille’s murder victims. By the culmination of the novel, Grenouille had executed twenty-five adolescent females in order to capture their scents as ingredients for his coveted …show more content…
The genotype ABCC11 is responsible for the secretion of many of the amino acids that constitute key body odorants. Without a functional ABCC11 allele, odorous molecules and their precursors are absent from axillary, or armpit, sweat and apocrine sweat glands (Martin, 2009). There are individuals who have non functional ABCC11 alleles, and thus seem to lack body odor. However, 80 to 95 percent of individuals without functional ABCC11 alleles are East Asian and of individuals of European descent, only 0 to 3 percent of people possess non functional ABCC11 alleles (Martin, 2009). Therefore, it is improbable if not impossible that a Frenchman would be non
Grenouille first became infatuated by a human’s scent at a celebration of the anniversary of King Louis XV 's coronation in Paris. During the firework show, Grenouille grew distracted as he followed an odor he explained he had to have, “...not simply in order to possess it, but for his heart to be at peace” (Süskind, 38). He traced the smell to its owner, a thirteen or fourteen year old girl picking plums in rue des Marais. The virgin became the first of Grenouille’s murder victims. By the culmination of the novel, Grenouille had executed twenty-five adolescent females in order to capture their scents as ingredients for his coveted …show more content…
The genotype ABCC11 is responsible for the secretion of many of the amino acids that constitute key body odorants. Without a functional ABCC11 allele, odorous molecules and their precursors are absent from axillary, or armpit, sweat and apocrine sweat glands (Martin, 2009). There are individuals who have non functional ABCC11 alleles, and thus seem to lack body odor. However, 80 to 95 percent of individuals without functional ABCC11 alleles are East Asian and of individuals of European descent, only 0 to 3 percent of people possess non functional ABCC11 alleles (Martin, 2009). Therefore, it is improbable if not impossible that a Frenchman would be non