He proves himself to be an amazing perfumer, and Baldini teaches him the science of perfume, showing him how distillation can be used to preserve a wide range of odors. He subsequently becomes an apprentice to the once-great perfumer Baldini. He stalks and kills her, staying with the body until the scent has gone. He becomes obsessed with possessing her scent and believes it must be his and his alone. She’s only a few years younger than Grenouille.
He traces it and finds that the source is a young virgin girl who has just entered puberty. One day, after memorizing all the smells in the city, he is surprised by something he’s never smelled before.
He is able to navigate in darkness by smell alone.
This allows him to perform apparently magical tricks, like identifying bad vegetables by the smell of worms or telling who is approaching a house. At this point, no one knows about his extraordinary olfactory abilities, which allow him to distinguish smell as easily as others would distinguish between different shades of color. He is repeatedly rejected due to his difficult personality, and at the age of eight, he is apprenticed to a tanner. Effectively an orphan, Jean-Baptiste is first given into the care of a wet nurse but is subsequently dropped off at a local orphanage after his wet nurse fears he may be possessed by the devil. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born to a mother who is arrested, accused of killing a previous child. The novel opens in Paris, France in 1738. This study guide was composed using the First Vintage International Edition, published in 2001 by Vintage International, an imprint of Random House Inc.Ĭontent Warning: The source material contains depictions of violence, murder, suicidal ideation, and cannibalization. A German-language film adaptation premiered in 2006, and the book has been adapted in different forms including a Russian musical and references in pop and rock songs. It received widespread critical acclaim and was the winner of the 1987 PEN Translation prize for its English-language release. It is one of the most successful modern German novels, selling more than 20 million copies worldwide in 49 different languages. Perfume explores themes of obsession and the charismatic power of evil, as well as the relationship between scent and emotion. Being able to distinguish a vast array of scents is very useful for his work in the perfume trade, but his thoughts turn to murder when he encounters a girl with the most wonderful scent he’s ever smelled. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer tells the tale of an 18th-century French orphan, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who is born with an exceptional sense of smell but is rejected by society.
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