ABSTRACT
Many novelists create unusual characters in order to attract the reader’s sympathy, and Patrick Süskind is one of them. One of Süskind’s work entitled Perfume: Story of a Murderer tells a story of a character named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who experiences withdrawal because he is suffering a personality disorder. This undergraduate thesis assumes that Grenouille’s personality disorder manifests alienation symptoms.
As the ground of the study, there are two problems formulated. The first problem discusses the characteristics of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. The second problem discusses how Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s characteristics reveal alienation symptoms.
This study employs library research in order to find out Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s characteristics and how his characteristics reveal alienation symptoms. The writer collects the data by analyzing the books and web-based articles. This study applies psychological approach to analyze the alienation symptoms experienced by Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.
There are two findings of the study. The first finding defines Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s characteristics as an ignorant, prodigious, and ambitious character. Grenouille’s ignorant characteristic is depicted through his experience of being ignored. Grenouille’s prodigious characteristic can be seen through his quality of being an independent learner and having a peculiar ability since he was kid. His ambitious characteristic is revealed through his actions in reaching his life purposes by justifying any means. The second finding depicts that Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s alienation symptoms are seen from his state of being helpless, disobedient, different, depressed, and difficult to interact with others. Further, Grenouille’s alienation symptoms are depicted through his interactions with other characters. To conclude, it can be observed that Grenouille’s characteristics and interactions with other characters in the story manifest the symptoms of alienation
