Analysis of the Character of Jean-Baptiste from Patrick Suskind's Novel Perfume

In the novel perfume written by Patrick Suskind, a child is born with an incredible sense of smell. The boy’s name was Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste, he murdered multiple women for being beautiful and having a distinct smell from other women. The author Suskind portrayed Jean-Baptiste as a sympathetic character who was treated differently from the rest of society. Jean-Baptiste did not know how to react to society, especially women as he was raised mostly with boys and worked in a tannery away from any kind of good smell. The experiences that he went through shaped him into a murderer who didn't know exactly what he was doing, he wanted to feel like everyone else and be accepted in society.

The first victim of Jean Baptiste was a red-headed girl who was cutting up plums. Jean-Baptiste was astonished as he thought, “for a moment he was so confused that he actually thought he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful in this girl”(41). Jean-Baptiste did not know how to react to the red-headed girl, Her smell took him back confused about how a human could have such a sweet smell. Jean-Baptiste did not want the smell to be ruined, as he grabbed her and strangled her, not fully comprehending what was going on. He inhaled her scent making sure he could capture it. Jean-Baptiste did not fully comprehend why he was killing her, all he knew was that he felt no remorse for what he was doing to the red-headed girl. All Jean-Baptiste understood was that she had an innocent smell that he could not ignore, he did not want that smell to be ruined to the realization of society. The scent of the red-headed girl had a pure scent that Jean-Baptiste could not overlook as much as he could.

In that moment he decided he wanted to be the greatest perfumer and went to find the only person who could help him learn everything there is to know about perfumes and what was needed to create it. Jean-Baptiste meets Baldini, the best perfumer in Paris, where he seeks an opportunity to meet him when Grimal sends skins to him. Jean-Baptiste shows Baldini that he is capable of learning what there is to become the greatest perfumer in the world. As he learns all this information, he plans to go to Grasse, the best place to become a perfumer, as it is the paradise of perfumery. When he arrives he begins to kill women who have similar scents as the red-headed girl. Jean-Baptiste thought that if he could create this one perfume he would finally be accepted in society. As he finished the perfume he realized that he did not want to be like or understand why people were the way they were. Suskind made sure to express Jean-Baptiste's emotion towards the people of Grasse was detailed enough to have the reader understand what exactly Jean-Baptiste felt in that moment. Jean-Baptiste never wanted to be apart of how society truly was, he wanted to live a life how he once viewed when he was younger before being traded constantly by people who never wanted him.

The strokes of such an artist are only as strong as their essence. Perfumers in France focused on flowers and objects that weren't different from reality. Jean-Baptiste wanted to get the scent out of everything, for example, iron, and water, items which a normal human would not be able to smell. He began to realize that, “in that moment he experienced the greatest triumph of his life, and he was terrified. He was terrified because he could not enjoy one second of it”(240). Jean-Baptiste killed these girls for the sole reason of being accepted in French society. He came to the realization that his disdain for people originated from a misconception and the revelation that people were not as kind and understanding as he wishes they were. Everything he strived for was a lie, he was never going to be like everyone else. The only way Jean-Baptiste would be able to leave this life is to use the one item he was destined to create, Perfume. Jean-Baptiste was never fully in control of his mind clearly desiring the love he didn't receive from his mother. All his murder victims were innocent females that were still pure to the world, unlike his mother who murdered all her other children. Suskind makes sure that the reader knows that his victims were innocent girls who did not know what was wrong with the world. Suskind as an author made sure to represent an ego pathology which is the structural and functional devastation from the normal that constitute social ill, cultivated in ways of self-center.

Throughout the story, his sense perception had been increased compared to the rest of society. Jean-Baptiste was born leaning towards a disturbed genius who was incredibly smart in one aspect but not bright in the other. Jean-Baptiste convinces himself that he is a revolutionary genius in terms of his sense of smell. Everything he has done has reflected on the rejection of his mother. Without such a pre-oedipal triangulation, the child remains suspended in a regressed state of primary narcissism. Jean-Baptiste has not been able to move on from the effects of melancholic depression, in which he is unable to mourn the loss of maternal symbiosis. The physical effects of child abandonment are depression, lack of energy and creativity, anger and grief. All of these symptoms appear in Jean-Baptiste's life as he is angry with the world and cannot fully interact with people in society. The only sense of grief that Jean-Baptiste felt during this whole novel was the red-headed girl who he killed first and in that moment he truly felt alone. Jean-Baptiste's unusual ability of scent makes him a sociopath who is forever debarred from full membership in the human race. Jean-Baptiste's perception of scent highlights mankind’s tendencies to discount a rich channel of perception simply because it is too base and ephemeral, Jean-Baptiste's obsessive focus on scent leads to his abominable acts.

The experiences that he went through shaped him into a murderer who did not know what he was doing, he wanted to feel like everyone else. Suskind made sure to portray Jean-Baptiste as a sympathetic character who acted differently from the rest of society. In the mind of Jean-Baptiste, he saw that death was the only way he could end this cycle of despair and hatred of society, as Jean-Baptiste walked back to Paris and poured the perfume onto his body and led himself towards a group of criminals looking for food. He felt that as if he was finally being released from this world, The criminals signify all the torture and hatred he’s endured from his whole life, they were finally releasing him from this world.