So, Light!

Nona Schanowski sent me a book last year that I loved reading – Perfume by Patrick Suskind. I had been itching to write a review about it, but could not quite put my finger to it.

Recently, Marie (ellafitz) posted a review of the film version and finally, a comment by Faith (faitherasmo) unleashed the review that had been percolating in my mind. Here it is:

'As for being a "murderer", I personally don't think he is. It was out of his "control".' – faitherasmo

The term "murderer" connotes a whole morality system of the human species. Like, could a lioness hunting her prey be called a murderer? Or a cat stalking a bird or mouse and playing with it till it dies?

My take on Perfume is this: that there is a very thin line that separates the whole human society from the animal world that operates on base instincts. The novel's protagonist Grenouille is a human aberration because he lived his life like an animal, surviving in the unkind society he moved in through the use of a base instinct – his keen sense of smell. Ironically, he himself had no smell at all, thereby making his fellow humans (who depended on their animal sense of smell to validate their feelings) either suspicious, indifferent or downright aggressive towards him.

Grenouille never experienced loving kindness, thus he was incapable of giving it, too. And yet, he desired the scent that seemed to make humans respond with love.

The penultimate orgy scene, wherein Grenouille was seen by the people as lovable (after he had doused himself with the scent he concocted from the many lovable/lovely girls he had killed), served to show that humans still basically operate on animal instincts. The crowd's sense of morality gets thrown out the window when their sense of smell made them adore and love the convicted murderer Grenouille.

Then, the final scene wherein Grenouille makes for himself a scent that aroused in the people who smelled it an intense desire to have for themselves the source of the smell (an analogy for the feeling of love is the need to have for one's self the object of desire), shows how it was still the very human need for love that ultimately revealed Grenouille's humanity.