The Evolution of Sacred Spaces in Patrick Suskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Abstract

The objective of this research article is to analyze the evolution of sacred inside sacred spaces in Patrick Suskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by deriving its basic framework from Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. According to Eliade, the religious man of archaic society was living in a sacred space where man was in unity with the divine world. Man’s deviation from the divine world left him in a state of displacement and anxiety which are the fundamental steps in the characters’ sacred space making. In context of Grenouille, he is trying to compensate for original space and sacredness of the primitive times by making alternative sacred spaces on earth providing them refuge psychologically. This research tries to locate “crypto-religious” attitude of Grenouille by extending Eliade’s concept of non-homogeneity of space and Axis Mundi. As a result, the research proves sacred space making of Grenouille as a Defense Mechanism made by his brain for healing and leading a wide range of debate on Self-Healing.