The Character Development Of Patrick Suskind's Perfume

Patrick Suskind has a very interesting way of developing and using characters in the book, Perfume. Suskind places characters all throughout the novel in order to serve a single purpose to the main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Once a character has fulfilled his or her purpose to Grenouille, Suskind finds a way to remove the now useless character from Perfume. Characters that once played an important role in the character development of Grenouille become irrelevant, and Suskind developed a unique way to maintain a useful relationship with the main character other than himself in the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Many reasons exist for the use of different characters in the development of Grenouille, but once the role of any character …show more content…
Specifically, Suskind removes characters for having a lack of emotion towards Grenouille. Perfume is a bildungsroman novel, which means that the reader follows the main character from birth to death. This also means that the reader follows the entire character development of the main character, and gets to judge the course of the main character’s development by the author. Suskind positions Grenouille to have characteristics that force him into an outcast while not allowing him any chance to “fit in.” This forces a lack of emotion for Grenouille from one of the most important characters in the novel, Madame Gaillard. Suskind states that “… because of her fatal lack of emotion, Madame Gaillard had a merciless sense of order and justice” (19.) Not only can the reader pick up on any lack of emotion from Madame Gaillard towards Grenouille, Suskind lays the lack of emotion right out in front of the reader. Little does any surface reader know that in order for Grenouille to develop, he needs an emotionless person in his life. Suskind reveals this by saying “but here, with this small souled woman, he throve” (20.) During the eighteenth century, showing love and giving caring affection to a child so that he or she will fully develop into a caring human being evolves as the cultural norm. Madame …show more content…
After Grenouille exits his removal of one’s self in the cave, a mad scientist by the name of Tallade-Espinasse finds him. Suskind gives this mad scientist a theory that conveys scientific mockery, to further the development of Grenouille’s character. Espinasse describes Fluidium letale as a poisonous gas released by the earth, and he believes that fluidium letale ran its course on Grenouille in the cave. The Marquis describes Grenouille as a “creature more disposed toward death than life” (142.) The marquis makes attempts at reversing the effects of the fluidium letale on Grenouille, and Suskind shows the reader how the Marquis fakes results to gain acceptance in the scientific world. After the Marquis transforms Grenouille into a new person, Grenouille falls back into an awfully sick state. The Marquis blames this on the perfume because of its creation from roots that come from the earth-which falls into his fluidium letale theory-and he sets off on his own journey to prove his theory to the scientific community. The scientific mockery truly comes in at this point, where the Marquis decides to climb the tallest mountain in the Pyrenees to heal himself of any and all fluidium letale. “He would descend form the mountain precisely on Christmas Eve” (161.) He has plans to return, yet “he returned neither as an old man nor a young one” (161.) The scientific