of them is genius. From the discussion below, I will try to describe his extraordinary talent.
4.2.1 Extraordinary sense of smell
Grenouille is born as an orphan. He has faced the various temptations, up the smallest to the biggest. Everybody around him feel that an odd situation. They
think that grenouille is not a human. He is the son of devil. His first wet nurse, Jean Bussie feels it. Grenouille is very greedy, all the things he eats. He drinks her
milk up to make her thin. And the most strange is that he does not have body odour.
As quoted: “‘That’s not what I mean,’ said the wet
nurse peevishly, shoving the basket away. ‘ I don’t mean what’s in the nappy. His soil
smells, that’s true enough. But it’s the bastard himself, he doesn’t smell.’”
Suskind, 1986:11
The case is not a cheat from Jean Bussie. It is the fact. A baby should have a good odour, but Grenuoille does not. She tells the case to Father Terrier.
He is in charge of the churchs charities and the distribution of its money to the poor and needy. He does not believe it. And the wet nurse remains in her opinion
that Grenouille is a monster, so she entrusts the baby to Terrier. He first thinks Grenouille is a cute baby. But when he brings Grenouille in
his home, he checks the nurse say that the baby hasn’t odor. He smells the baby and observes the odor. He looks at the nose, which is not a proper nose, but only a
pug of nose, forever crinkling and puffing and quivering. He shudders. He feels
sick to his stomach. He pulls back his own nose as if he smells something foul that he wants nothing to do it. Finally he decides to send Grenouille far away, and
the best place is Saint-Antoine. That is the place for the screaming brat far off the east, beyond the Bastille.
There, he is nursed by Madame Gaillard. When she was a child, her father has struck her across the forehead with a poker, just above the base of the nose,
and she has lost for good all sense of smell and every sense of human warmth and human coldness. And he is lucky sent in Gaillard’s establishment. His ability
develops rapidly. As quoted:
“At the age of six, he had completely grasped his surroundings olfactory. There
was not an object in Madame Gaillard ‘s house, no place along the northern reaches
of the rue de Charonne, no person, no stone, tree, bush or picked fence, no spot
be it ever so small, that he did not know, could not recognize again by holding its
uniqueness firmly in his memory”. Suskind, 1986:30
From the quotation above, it can be inferred that he is an astonishing man. All the cases are the contradiction of his talent. The quotation proves that
Grenouille absolutely trusts that language does not enough explain the meaning of his perception. He grows accustomed to using such words only when his contact
with others. He interprets all the things by his nose. He doesn’t smell but he has extraordinary sense of smell.
4.2.2 Autodidact
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