The Anxiety of the main character and his ways in dealing with it in Patrick Suskind's Perfume

Toisuta, Ronny (2008) The Anxiety of the main character and his ways in dealing with it in Patrick Suskind's Perfume. Bachelor thesis, Petra Christian University.

Abstract

The study deals with the anxiety faced by Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the main character in Patrick Suskind?s Perfume. In this novel, this character has committed an unusual murder toward twenty five women by hitting their heads and shaving all the victims? hairs and wrapping their dead bodies in order to take their odour. He struggles in making his own perfume that is his personal odour, so that he can be accepted by society. Due to the remarkable plot of Perfume, mainly on the peculiarity of the character of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, this thesis aims to figure out the types of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille?s anxiety and the efforts he makes to overcome it as seen in Patrick Suskind?s Perfume. Reaching the purpose of this study, psychological approach is applied particularly the theory of anxiety and defense mechanism by Sigmund Freud to find out anxiety and his efforts to overcome it. It eventually turns out that Jean-Baptiste Grenouille endures a great anxiety for the reason that he passed painful and hard times when he was young and the fact that he is around the offensive environment. It ends up with his unconscious building of a defense mechanism in order to overcome those matters. Indeed it appears with Jean-Baptiste Grenouille?s anxiety and his efforts to deal with this fear result in his murder in Perfume.

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