Trajectory of an Anti-Hero in Partick Suskind’s Perfume

Abstract

This research work examines the representation of an anti-hero in Patrick Suskind’s Perfume (1985). In the setting of the Eighteenth century French society, Suskind’s eccentric male protagonist, with his superhuman quality of smelling human scent invents perfume out of the dead bodies of young girls. In the contemporary French society, Grenouille constantly kills innocent beautiful girls just for his passion of making perfume. The project claims that the novelist creates a hero who does not go with the values and principles of the modern world. This project points out to the utilitarian perspective of the contemporary society and exhibits its harsh impacts on the lives of all common people, who are forced to work for their survival. Suskind presents the sorrowful condition of people under such system of the society in which they are always dominated, exploited, tormented, and neglected by the handful of powerful people. Throughout the novel, Suskind justifies his protagonist as the product of such a society and tries to establish him as an anti-hero in the novel.This project focuses on the bourgeois thrust and its impacts on the character of Grenouille in particular and common people in the world in general. In Perfume, Suskind portrays the protagonist as an anti-hero who doesnot embody heroism in a conventional sense of the term as he kills young girls for his passion, not only because he is guided by the materialistic French society but because he is totally deprived of natural parental affection. Through the portrayal of Grenouille as an anti- hero, Suskind tries to challenge the dialectic of Enlightenment for its exclusion of sensibility and show the link between the late 18th century French Politics and the late 20th century global violence. To support the claim, the researcher draws some theoretical concepts from the thinkers such as A.C. Ward, J.A. Cuddon, Sigmund Freud and others.