A Study on the Contradictory Narrative of Süskind’s “Perfume”

Sskind's "Perfume" constructs the story frame of the text through three sets of contradictory narratives, exploring the process of Grenouille, who is regarded as an alien by others, trying to find and construct true meaning of being a human being from three aspects: human smell, emotion, and discourse.This process constantly encounters deconstruction from its own smelllessness, senselessness and aphasia, thereby implying the lack of human subjectivity and value through Grenouille's failure to find identity.It also uses the image of perfume to express the author's deep concerns about the loss of subjectivity, the disillusionment of classical morality, and the violence of industrial civilization in France and even Europe in the eighteenth century.