The Conclusion of Suskind's Perfume

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The Conclusion of Suskind’s Perfume Grenouille’s dramatic triumph over the most insurmountable odds, his miraculous exoneration in the face of the most overwhelming imaginable evidence, in the face of his voluntary confession, in the face of wild, bloodthirsty mass outrage – does not make him feel good. His creation of a super-perfume that is so powerful it can make the father of the beautiful young virgin he has murdered fall down at his feet and beg him to become his son – does not fulfill or inspire him. It only makes him feel worse. It only reaffirms his feelings of contempt and disgust for humanity, bringing his internal conflict to a sad conclusion: his hatred of man is more powerful that his love of himself. The question that troubled him before – why am I doing this? – comes back to him now, and having proven to himself that he can rule the world, he decides he doesn’t want to. It holds no interest for him. Neither is he interested in returning to the dream world of the cave. Meaningless fantasy. Power doesn’t excite him. He knows that now. With that knowledge comes his loss of all sense of purpose in life. He has mastered the game and is now no longer interested in playing it. The last mystery is death, and that is what he wants now. He wants only to return to the stench of Paris and die there, in the place where he was born. As he douses himself with the super-perfume, he knows what will happen. It is suicide, strange second-hand suicide. He knows he will be cannibalized – ripped apart and consumed by human animals. Like Grimal, Baldini, the Marquis, he will be erased by death. Nothing will be left behind. All his life Grenouille has been an agent of death and it is somehow fitting that he will be the agent of his own death as well, and that his death will be the most brutal of all, and that it will be inflicted upon him out of
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