The Archetype Of Grenouille: A Hero's Journey

The interactive oral presentation given by the group on the archetype of the journey, has helped me make connections with Patrick Suskind’s Perfume and to the journey archetype. They introduced the ideas of Grenouille being a hero and following the steps of a hero’s journey. It connects heavily to the theme that anyone can accomplish what they if they put enough effort into it. Throughout the story of Perfume, the protagonist Grenouille, follows Joseph Campbell’s steps of a hero’s journey. The steps of the hero’s journey include a call to adventure, supernatural aid, threshold, mentor, challengers, revelation in cave, and reintegration to society. These steps are generally the steps that heroes from many different works follow. At the end, the hero is usually rewarded with an identity, promised

Throughout the story, Grenouille’s fixation on his desire to create the best perfume results in the creation of the idea of creating human perfection and his own identity. Suskind uses literary devices like metaphors, and irony to assist the reader in understanding Grenouille’s journey. An example of this is when Grenouille has a nightmare and how he describes the fog is suffocating him. He compares himself to the fog as in the sense that they both do not have a scent and he concludes on how he is the fog. It also describes the irony in how he is someone who values scent, but does not possess it naturally in himself. These are some obstacles that Grenouille must overcome throughout his journey. Grenouille starts to stray off the path of the hero’s journey at the end of the novel. Unlike other heroes, Grenouille dies at the end and is not reintegrated into society. The people eat him alive and his body disappears from existence. It is mentioned that the archetype of the journey and the archetype of the hero are very closely