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'Christianity In Patrick Suskind's Perfume'

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In Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, Suskind creates a postmodern mockery of Christianity and perverts the idea of Christ by elevating Grenouille onto a divine pedestal only to sequentially demonize him. Suskind illustrates a godly image of Grenouille from birth, but then contradicts this by degrading him and making him resemble the Devil. This description mocks Christianity by diluting the pure and kind image of Christ. He conjoins elements of the Devil and Christ by characterizing Grenouille as both. His sense of smell alludes to the power of God, yet later on he brings others into his sins and darkness like the Devil. This sacrilege reflects the postmodern time period in which Suskind wrote Perfume (1985) because it upends traditional ideas of religion and any idea of any common truth. …show more content…

Grenouille parallels Christ in his first moments. Suskind first applies setting to create a godlike image by making Grenouille’s birth take place in a fish market. In the bible Christ speaks onto his disciples “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men” (Authorized King James Version, Matthew 4:19). The fish motif parallels Grenouille with Christ and creates an expectation of leadership to salvation. Suskind incorporates multiple features into Grenouille’s birth adding to the Christ imagery such as the witnesses of the birth. In both the birth of Christ and Grenouille, witnesses crowd around and automatically become protective of the child. Lastly, the fact that Grenouille’s birth takes place above a graveyard symbolizes rebirth and resurrection because Grenouille’s mother creates life on top of centuries of death. The initial stages of Grenouille’s birth set him up as a godlike

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