Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a novel by Patrick Süskind. The story takes place in France in the 1700s. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with no body smell, which makes people find him strange and creepy. However, he has an incredible sense of smell; he can recognize thousands of different scents and even detect things from a great distance. As he grows up, Grenouille becomes obsessed with capturing every smell he can. He becomes a perfume maker and learns how to preserve scents. But soon, he wants to create the most beautiful perfume in the world, one that makes people love and admire him. To do this, he decides to use the scent of young women, especially one with a pure, perfect smell. He kills them to steal their scent and make his perfume. When he finally creates it, people are so amazed that they adore him completely, but Grenouille realizes that even this power can’t make him happy.
He possessed the greatest talent in the world: an absolute sense of smell. But it was useless to him, because he himself was scentless — a man outside of humanity, invisible, and yet cursed to crave belonging. (p.25)
The quotation shows that Grenouille has an amazing sense of smell, but it also makes him feel alone because he has no personal scent. People don’t notice him, and he feels like he doesn’t belong. Even though he is very talented, he still wants to be loved and accepted. This need for attention and connection makes him obsessed with creating the perfect perfume, which is a main idea in the book about loneliness, identity, and obsession.