Patrick Süskind's Perfume

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has no scent but can identify the minutest one. To create a perfume that would seduce people into loving and worshiping him, he searches far and wide for the perfect ingredient. When he found that scent on a teenage girl, he intended to extract it from her even if that meant killing her.

In Perfume, Patrick Süskind has created a Gothic tale as dark as Frankenstein, but a tale of creation of the perfect perfume rather than the perfect man. Scents and fragrances dominate the book and details of the extraction processes make the book a good read. But Grenouille is a greater monster than Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. Through his misery and suffering, Grenouille learned to hate humanity and to take revenge upon it. He has no conscience and his only goal is to create the perfect perfume. If he had to kill innocent girls, so be it. He aspires to be God. He wanted the people to love and worship him. He succeeds. He becomes all-powerful, but without his own smell, he has no identity. That is his grief. In the end, he destroys himself.

Patrick Süskind