Animal+references+reflecting+increasing+activeness

The animals used to parallel Grenouille and Siddhartha, central characters of Patrick Süskind’s __Perfume: The Story of a Murderer__ and Herman Hesse’s __Siddhartha__ respectively, before and after their pursuit of a life goal become passive to active, reflecting the change in their activeness in the novel. Before his dedicated pursuit of mixing the ultimate perfume, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is a passive character who is compared to a tick, a passive animal which, like Grenouille, is waiting for a chance to pursue an ordeal in life. Similarly, when Siddhartha blindly decides to follow the Samanas’ way in hopes to learn the method to free oneself from Samsara (suffering), he meditates in the jungle, impersonating dead animals which represent passiveness and inaction. However, after having decided upon a life goal, Grenouille becomes more decisive and more active, hence he is compared to more predatory animals such as spiders, which are very active animals. Likewise, when Siddhartha has made his final decision as to his methodology to attaining Nirvana (enlightenment) after leaving the world of Samsara (suffering through indulgence of materialistic wealth), he is compared to a caged rare songbird being freed, which is a lively and active animal representing freedom.