Character and Setting

Patrick Süskind's "Perfume" tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a Parisian orphan with an incredible sense of smell, living the 18th century. The book is widely acclaimed. The characters and settings in the novel are quite amazing. The character of Grenouille is an unreal character. His lack of morals and social understandings, something that is quite evident from the beginning of `Perfume', is what makes the character of Grenouille somewhat implausible. Baldini, the perfumer who hires the gifted Grenouille as an assistant, is a more believable character. He is an aging perfumer who is losing his competitive edge against some of the up and coming perfumers of Paris, until he meets Grenouille. The Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse is a liege lord and a member of parliament in Toulouse. A scientist who has bought forth the theory of the ludicrous fluidum letale, the Marquis...