Perfume Summary

Summary

Chapters 1-4

By: Alejandra Castillo Rodríguez

Around the eighteenth century Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born in France, where everything had a bad aspect and the smell was bad in every place. Everything was deplorable, the society in general had a shank in all their bodies and nobody was free of that shank. I just can imagine a gray place and full of garbage when nobody lives comfortable, a disgusting place.

His mother didn’t want to have the boy because she had several problems with the other four so she decided to assassinate him, but she failed and the police caught her leaving the boy alone.

He had three wet nurses but they left him a few days later because he was greedy and was a problem to them. It looks like nobody loved the little boy, even his mother wanted to kill him because he was a problem.

The police officer in turn decided to send the child to an orphan, but to do this the boy needed to be baptized. He got rid of him at the cloister of Saint-Merri in the rue Saint-Martin. There they baptized him with the name Jean-Baptiste.

Finally, a wet nurse decides to take care of him for three francs per week, her name was Jeanne Bussie.

But, a few days later Jeanne knock the Father Terrier’s door and left the boy in a basket, when the Father opened the door asked to the wet mother why she doesn’t want to keep the baby with her, and she argued the boy was possessed by the devil, because he didn’t smell how the babies usually smells and also he was sucking all what she had and making her lose weight.

Father Terrier tried to convince the woman to keep the baby but was useless; she rejected the money that was offered to her. So Father Terrier didn’t have other option, took the basket and went inside with the baby.

Why nobody wanted to take care of Jean-Baptiste? Why he acted in that way? Was he really possessed by the devil? Now I’m very interested in this story, I feel sorry for that child, he doesn’t have nobody who takes care of him or who love him. It seems like if he were predestinated to be rejected for the people.

Father Terrier was convinced, according with his knowledge and experiences, that there was no reason to think that the child was possessed, it was only a crazy idea, the babies are just little creatures and they don’t have idea about the world, they are just living.

But the doubt didn’t leave his head. Father Terrier start to play with the baby and imagine that he were his son, started to love him or at least feeling something good for him. At the time he was playing with the baby, he smelled his fingers and tried to perceive a smell, but there were no smell, nothing.

Suddenly the baby woke up, but his eyes were not open yet, it was his nose the first in perceives Father Terrier.

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