Reflective Statement - Perfume

The Age of Enlightenment, a time where you do not trust anything that has been said to you, a time of experimentation, a time where you test everything out for yourself and think for yourself. The novel Perfume by Patrick Suskind can link to that topic as the main protagonist Grenouille is known as to be ‘experimenting’ with the blood of young virgins in order to make that perfect scent. He also has to not believe what society thinks of him and think about how to live his own life himself and makes decisions in doing so.

Perfume has many different links to other cultures, for example, the Chinese Culture. In Perfume, Grenouille makes his journey to “Grasse”, the city of Perfume, where he lives in a cave for 7 years, living life as an outsider to the world around him, but this time period could also be seen as a time of meditation for Grenouille, and because of those 7 years of just himself and the cave, he was able to be aware of his own ambitions and what he wants to achieve. Having no smell of his own, he realises that he would be seen as a ‘nobody’ to society, fearing now his own oblivion. Although Grenouille feels fear, he plans to continue his journey through Grasse, where he could show the world his existence, and show that he was more than the ordinary person, that he was exceptional.

Grenouille’s journey was quite similar to the journey of Enlightenment for Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. At 35, Gautama travelled to Bodh Gaya; a place far away from society itself, sat in a cave under a Bodhi Tree, starving himself for 7 days and 7 nights. Ignoring all his senses, abandoning the connection of him and the rest of the world, made Siddhartha Gautama enlightened, and realising the truth of life leading him to become the first Buddha.

Both Siddhartha Gautama and Grenouille stayed in a cave far away from society, living without any awareness of the surroundings around them, sacrificing their own senses. Through this, we realise that by...