Stench stands for the soul of people and who they really are. Patrick Süskind describes the “odor of humanity” as “a sweaty-oily, sour-cheesy, quite richly repulsive” mixture. The connotation of “humanity” implies that it isn’t just human individuals that smell rank, but the race of humans, their human nature and disposition, internal and external, and to have such disgusting and “repulsive” scents describing humanity as a whole implies that human nature is imperfect, disgusting, and sinful. Also, the fact that other humans cannot smell each other’s scents implies that it takes a supernatural being (in this case, Grenouille) to see through their sinful nature, since the humans are desensitized and so engulfed in it.

Perfume stands for the mask of perfection, or holiness, to cover up for sinful human nature. The “fashionable artificial odors” act as a “disguise” to hide human scent. Perfume is supposed to smell good, cover up bad scent, and attract people. The bad scent is the sin of humanity, and the good smell is humanity wanting to appear as holy. All the girls that Grenouille kills are very young and beautiful, and their scents are “fatally wonderful.” The connotation associated with youth is innocence, and innocence is also a characteristic of a non-sinful, angelic being, so the perfume stands for godliness and righteousness. Grenouille wants to harness this wonderful scent so he can appear angelic, and people will love him.

Grenouille stands for the anti-Christ. He is described as both good and evil. First, he tempts Giuseppe Baldini to be an apprentice in his shop. Grenouille “hissed out in a reptile fashion” that he wants to work for him, shows him a sample of his superb abilities of mixing perfume, and Baldini watches, “quite simply curious.” Grenouille then “conquered the man [Baldini] who had yielded to him.” This shows that Grenouille is the devil, the serpent, tempting Adam and Eve (in this case, Baldini). On the contrary, he is also described as a Christ figure when he retreats to the secluded cave in the mountain, and his diction resembles God’s. He says that “[t]his [earth] was his empire…created and ruled over by him” and “he saw that it was good and that the whole earth was saturated with his divine Grenouille seeds.” This shows that he is trying to be a Christ figure, someone everyone would adore and love and worship. These two traits coupled together show that he wants to rule over people, dominate them, not in a good way like God, but in an evil way, one in which the people like him, but which he can control them by evil means.