PERFUME

1. Plot introduction

Set in 18^th century in France. Perfume relates the story of Jean Baptiste Grenouile.

2. Character

v Grenouille’s mother

v Jean-Baptiste Grenouille: Protagonist. He is an orphan. He has no scent; he has no smell. And he creates perfumes with murdering 25 girls to take their scent.

v Jeanne Bussie: one of the women who adopt Granouille. And she is the first person who realizes that he has no scent, and claims he is sucking all the life out of her.

v Father Terrier: he is in charge of the church’s charities. First, he thinks Grenouille is a cute baby, but once Grenouille begin to sniff him, and he sends the baby to a boarding house.

v Madam Gaillard: she has no sense of smell, so she doesn’t know that Grenouille has no scent. Her goal in life is to save enough money to have a proper death and funeral. Ironically, she loses all her money in old age, dies a miserable death, and even buried.

v Grimal: he is a tanner. He lives near the river in the rue de la Mortellerie. Grenouille works for him until Baldini pays for him.

v Giuseppe Baldini: he is an old perfumer. He has a perfume shop filled with a strong of scents. The shop is located in the middle of a bridge, the Pont-au-Change. But after Grenouille leaves him, his house and warehouse plunge into the rivers as the bridge finally collapses.

v Chernier: baldini’s assistans.

v Pelissier: he is considered the most innovative perfumer in Paris.

v Taillade-Espinasse: marquis, liege lord of a town of Pierrefort and a member of parliament.

v Madame Arnulfi: she is a widow. She owns the perfume business of her dead husband and has a journeyman named Drout, and he is also her lover.

v Druot: arnulfi’s journeyman.

v Laure Richis: a beautiful red-headed girl. She is daughter of Antonio Richis. And she is central o Grenouille plans of creating a perfume that will people love him.

3. Point of view: the writer use third person.

4. Short summary

Grenouille is an orphan who no has smell. And he is rejected by people. One day he smells a scent and follow it and he find that the source of this beautiful scent is a girl. He kills her to preserve the scent. He dedicated his life to discovering the perfect scent. When he works for Baldini, he makes him become the most popular perfumer in Paris. On his way to Grasse, Grenouille become so disgusted by the scent of humanity and he spends seven years in a cave on top of the Massif Central. He realizes with a shock that he has no personal scent at all.

Grenouille journeys to Montpelier, where an amateur scientist, the Marquis de La Taillade Espinasse, and he use Grenouille become a test his thesis “so-called fluidium letale”. He makes Grenouille looks like a clean gentleman for the first time in his life. Grenouille creates a body odor for himself from the ingredients “cat shit, cheese, and vinegar”, and he is accepted by society. Moving to Grasse, Granouille becomes intoxicated by the scent of a girl, Laure. Meanwhile he begins on a career of murder of beautiful virgins for the scent he will make from Laure. Eventually Laure’s father realizes that Laure is to be the next victim. He flees with Laure but Grenouille pursues them and kills Laure, capturing her scent.

Grenouille is pardoned for his crimes, and Laure’s father wants to adopt him because when he apprehended and sentenced to death and one day of his execution. He is wearing Laure’s scent and instead of an execution the whole town becomes a massive orgy. But the experience of the power has dissatisfied him, because he is not loved for himself, but for perfume which he made.

In Paris, Grenouille approaches a group of low life people (thieves, murderer, etc), who don’t notice him approaching. They feel slightly disgusted having just eaten a human being, but they feel overwhelmed with happiness.