The Nature of Love

Süskind examines the nature of love throughout the novel, both what love is and what love means. By connecting the emotion of love directly with the fleeting world of scent, Süskind is perhaps suggesting that, like scent, love is something difficult to grasp or to express in language.

Grenouille grows up without love. Süskind writes that given the circumstances of his younger life, Grenouille has a choice of demanding to be fed or to be loved, but not both. This is largely because of his lack of scent. The first person to try to care for him, the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie, rejects him because he does not smell like a child should. He has no scent at all, and she believes him to be evil because of it. Father Terrier, who takes Grenouille back from the wet nurse, at first shows...