An analysis of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille Characteristic in Patrick Süskind’s Perfume with Psychological Approach

Name : Corah Sinulingga

NPM: 106060614

Gunadarma University

    Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 1985 literary historical cross-genre novel (originally published in German as Das Perfume) by German writer Patrick Süskind. It was an international bestseller and sold out up to 15 million copies. The novel explores the sense of scent, and its relationship with the emotional meaning that scents may carry.

   According to Webster’s Dictionary (1995: 687) novel is an imaginative prose Narrative of some length, usually concerned with human experience and social behaviors, and normally cast in the form of a connected story the novel this genre of literature. From novel, we also can learn about sociality, morality, and psychological aspect.

Reading especially a novel for some people is one of an activity that can be so pleasing to pass their leisure time. Besides increase our knowledge through its story, we can also take a lessons because it reflected human lives values, such as how to give affection and love, solve the problem, respect each other, control our attitudes, or just how to make ourselves happier, etc. In short, the entire genre is interesting to read, it depends on what we like best and that has values that we could learn and take the advantages from those.

   Above all Perfume is a story of identity, communication and the morality of the human spirit. In 2006 it was turned into a feature film by the same name directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman. Perfume is the first novel that is written by Patrick Süskind. Patrick Suskind was born in 1949. He is a writer for a television in Munich before writing the Perfume. His second novel Die Taube. The others Suskind’s novel Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer was published in 1992, and Drei Geschichten in 1996. Patrick

   Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is the main a main character in Perfume. He is an unwanted Parisian orphan who, having little personal scent, is rejected by others because they are disturbed by his lack of odor but endowed with an incomparable sense of smell. He has an extraordinary power to discern odours, and comes to loathe the scent of other people. He apprentices himself to a perfumer and becomes obsessed with procuring the perfect scent that will make him fully human. One day he smells a divine scent and follows it, and is shocked to find that the source of this beautiful scent is a young woman. He kills her to get a better smell of her scent, but after death the scent ceases. He dedicates his life to preserve this perfect scent. In the process, he creates perfumes that powerfully manipulate human emotions, murdering 25 girls to take their scent.

   The writer chooses this novel because the writer wants to know the content of the novel, and take the positive side from the main character. Character is the total quality of a person’s behavior as revealed in his habits of thought and expression, his attitudes, and interest, his action and his personal philosophy of life. (Webster, 1995: 164). Other reason is the writer like to read a novel and short stories. It was an interested novel to analyze.

   The articles entitles of “An analysis of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille Characteristic in Patrick Süskind’s Perfume with psychological approach” Through a psychological approach, this paper tries to figure out Jean Babtise Grenouille characterizations and psychological factors influence him. The writer would try to figure out through the psychological approach why Jean Babtise Grenouille killed the 25 girls. Psychological approach is an approach that coming from an assumption that a literary work is merely discussing about human life’s (Semi, 1993: 806)

   In Psychology, Jean Babtise Grenouille suffered Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a disorder characterized by disturbances in thought, emotion, and behavior-disorder thinking, in which ideas are not logically related; foulty perception and attention; lack of emotion expressiveness or at times, inappropriate expressions; and disturbances in movement and behavior, such as a shuffling gait or a disheveled appearance (Kring M. Ann, et al., 2005; 350). Schizophrenia is he label given to a group of psychoses in which deterioration of functioning is marked by severe distortion of thought, perception, and mood, by bizarre behavior, and by social withdrawal (Lauren, Joan, Richard, 1996: 354). The factors that separate the high-risk children who developed schizophrenia from he high-risk and low-risk who remained normal; home life, institutionalization, school problems and criminal behavior, attention problem, birth complication (Lauren, Joan, Richard, 1996: 386).

The writer hopes that this research could be a useful reference for other researchers and readers.