Reflective Statement on Perfume by Patrick Suskind

393 Words2 Pages
During the interactive oral, five topics were presented but the most significant to me were the enlightenment and genius. Before this oral, I had not thought about the enlightenment to a great extent. However, I found out that if it wasn’t for the enlightenment, Grenouille would not exist. As he would have probably been left in the fish guts to die, but because of the enlightenment, social welfare now exists, causing the people to actually care what happened to misfortunate children. Also because of it justice was served to Grenouille’s mother for her attempted and committed crimes, showing how much of an influence it had on Grenouille’s life. However, it not only influenced Grenouille’s life, but also Baldini’s who was quite conventional about society evolving to become more civilised. He believed that the only way to acquire knowledge and skills was through the way he had learnt and that his way is the superior way, which reminded me of my father as he believes the only way to have a good life is through education and there is no other way. Of course this is true but it is not always the case and for him to only respect someone on that belief is hypocritical especially considering we come from Zimbabwe a corrupt country filled with poverty. I also learnt that if it wasn’t for the enlightenment, Grenouille would never have been able to achieve his dream which, although odd, is still a dream, making us question if being a genius requires you to follow the rules, break them. Personally, I think that sometimes you have to break the rules to get what you really want. It’s in our nature as humans to sometimes go to extreme lengths just to achieve what we want. Of course, most of the time, it’s considered selfish behaviour, but in Grenouille’s case, I understand that finding the perfect scent was his sole ambition, and without anything to motivate him, he was even more

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