Student Question
How do the circumstances of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's birth relate to the life he leads?
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born in a food market erected above the Cimetire des Innocents, the "most putrid spot in the whole kingdom" [p. 4]. He narrowly escapes death at birth; his mother, who had let her four other children die among the fish guts, would have done the same to him. But Grenouille miraculously survives.
Quick answer:
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's birth in a squalid, death-associated environment foreshadows his dehumanized life. Born among filth and narrowly escaping death, he lacks love and humanity from the start. His survival hints at a supernatural purpose, leading him to live selfishly, indifferent to human emotions. Grenouille's existence is driven by an insatiable quest for the "scent of life," compensating for the absence of his own natural scent, which defines his life and actions.
Jean Baptiste was born without any kind of humanity, and without any love. He would have been thrown to the streets and treated like garbage. His surroundings were also pathetic, stench-ridden, dirty, wild, and disgusting. He survives, not because he has a dispensation from God, but because he is already a supernaturally-equipped being with an unclear mission that serves nobody but himself.
Hence, that is how he lived his life, in rags, dirty, looking to satisfy this inner longing at the expense of human life, oblivious to human emotion, yet, in search for the one thing that made a difference, and it was the scent of life which he was born devoid of.
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