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Part 3, Chapter 45
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Perfume, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Growing Up and Becoming Human
Power and Control
Creative Genius vs. Convention and Assimilation
Upward Mobility and Social Movement
Scent, Sight, and the Grotesque
Summary
Analysis
Before daybreak, Grenouille gets up and pulls the cloth off of Laure's body. He scrapes the last fat scraps off of her skin and wipes her down, gathers her undershirt, nightgown, and hair, and rolls them up with the cloth. He doesn't look back at her as he crawls out the window.
At this point Laure is totally dead and even inhuman, as she's devoid of scent as well. In this way she becomes like Grenouille in her scentless-ness.
Themes
A scullery maid notices the ladder a while later but thinks nothing of it. Richis awakens hours later to bright sunlight, after sleeping soundly for the first time in months. He dresses and goes to wake Laure. She doesn't answer when he knocks on the door, and he unlocks it. When he swings the door open, the room is sparkling and Laure is dead, naked and hairless, and Richis is reminded of his earlier nightmare.
All appears to be well until Richis's dream comes to life in front of his eyes. The use of dreams in the novel provides this effective tool of foreshadowing, and allows the narrator to draw on the characters' vivid dreams to add weight to what happens in real life.
Themes
