Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Similar to considering nature vs. nurture when attempting to discern which aspects of Grenouille’s character are inborn and which are the result of years of abuse and neglect, the author focuses on the interplay between created and organic realities. On the one hand, there is something transcendent about the organic within the narrative, where those things which are “uncreated” have a special kind of power. People, first of all, are the most organic and are what Grenouille despises most of all. The organic is what Grenouille seeks to both capture and eliminate: destroying flowers for their scent, murdering animals to test his methods, and finally, murdering more than two dozen women in his ultimate pursuit of the perfect scent. The scents of the two girls—the girl with the plums, and Laure Richis—are, most purely, organic sources of attraction and hatred for Grenouille, who desires to possess and eliminate them simultaneously.

On the other hand, the crafted and created is most attractive to Grenouille as a final end. The organic—the flowers, the animals, the women—are merely means to a finely crafted and designed end. Grenouille is most at home with and most enjoys the process of creating a scent with his own power and out of his own genius.