#1 - Global Reference, Main Point

[Robert Carroll]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

The author wrote the passage to try to argue that perfumes can constitute an art form as sophisticated and subject to appreciation as more recognized arts like painting, literature, architecture, and music. The Main Point thus has to be something that captures the essence of the author's argument for the appreciation of perfumes. A reasonable prephrase would be as follows: "Great perfumes are great works of art, just like great paintings and great pieces of music, and they deserve to be appreciated as much as those more-recognized art forms."

Answer choice (A): This answer choices actually conflicts with the author's attitude in the last paragraph. It won't work as a Main Point if it is contrary to the author's opinion.

Answer choice (B): This is a statement with which the author might agree, but it does not encapsulate the Main Point. The author makes a comparison between perfumes and other art forms in order to argue that the current neglect of perfumes is unfortunate and that perfumes should be appreciated as creations of art in their own right. The similarity of reactions may support the idea that great perfumes deserve appreciation, so answer choice (B) could function as support for the Main Point, but it is not the Main Point itself.

Answer choice (C): This is a reasonable inference from the last paragraph, because the corporate and profit-driven nature of the perfume business "ill-serves" (line 56) fine perfume. However, it's not the Main Point.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.: This is a very good match for our prephrase, but that's only because our prephrase contained the elements of the Main Point. The author lamented the fact that great perfumes weren't as well appreciated as other forms of art, and argued that they deserved more appreciation.

Answer choice (E): This answer is wrong because it makes too much of the comparison between oil painting and perfume-making. The analogy between the two was used to support the point that great perfumes deserve appreciation. There's no attempt to prove that they are sister arts, and note that the author could have made the point equally well by comparing perfumes to other art forms. This answer, by making the specific choice of example into a part of the Main Point, misunderstands the purpose of the example.

[kcho10]

I had trouble figuring out the Main Point in this passage. I saw the passage structure as....
The passage talks about something that is strange/some kind of problem.Then it goes on to explain why the problem is so strange/unexpected, and then finally explains a possible reason why the problem exists.

D seemed too narrow to be correct. The first 3 paragraphs are about ans choice D, but the 4th paragraph is completely left out and seemed pretty important, especially considering that this was the author's viewpoint. And if D encompasses the main point, I don't see how E could be incorrect.

After reading the passage, I was under the impression that the author brought up why the issue was so unexpected/noteworthy in order to bring up his suggestion of why the issue existed. Please help explain why this is incorrect. Also is E incorrect because it focuses too much on 'sister arts'?

Thank you

[AthenaDalton]

Hi kcho,

Your approach of summarizing the structure of the passage is the right way to go!

Here are the key points I noted from this passage:

(1) Great perfume should be taken seriously as an art form, like the "sister art" of oil painting

(2) A brilliant perfumer can evoke the illusion of life on canvas, just like a great composer or painter

(3) One reason that truly great smells are undervalued today is that perfumes are mass-produced by corporations who focus on profit, not artistic merit

Answer choice (D) accurately covers all three of these points -- that perfume is an art form (like painting) and should be treated like art, not a mass-produced corporate product. Answer choice (D) says that great perfumes deserve respect and attention as great words of art, which fits with the author's criticism of how corporations mass-produce perfumes. The corporate focus on profits leads perfume makers to swap out the highest quality elements for cheap simulations. Perhaps a true artist would not compromise quality for price, as the current corporate perfumeries do.

Answer choice (E), by contrast, accurately covers about two-thirds of the paragraph about the artistic merit of perfume making as compared to oil painting, but doesn't fit with the last paragraph about corporate profit-making. The analogy about oil painting is thrown out as an example of how perfumery should be taken more seriously and not just mass-produced by corporations who care more about profit than fine smells, but it's not the main point of the passage.

I hope this helps -- good luck studying!

[taylorharris24]

Hello,

Is B incorrect simply because it only includes music or painting? I chose it thinking it was more specific and I think I assumed it meant works of art such as music or painting, not just those two specifically.

[Robert Carroll]

Taylor,

The statement in answer choice (B) seems like something that would have functioned in the passage as a premise. Even if the author had said something equivalent to that, what would the purpose of the statement have been? If a masterpiece perfume does evoke such strong reactions as masterpieces in other fields, so what? Well, the author would have answered my "so what?" question with something like "And because of this parallel to music and painting, perfuming as an art deserves as much appreciation as those fields already get." In other words, the parallels in the passage between perfume and other creations that strike the senses were meant to establish a parallel between the amount of appreciation each field deserves. Because music and painting are already appreciated as art forms, yet perfuming isn't, the author's point in drawing a comparison would be to show that perfuming should be elevated to the same status as an appreciated art as the other fields.

Thus, even if answer choice (B) were in the passage, or could be abstracted from it, it wouldn't be the Main Point.

Robert Carroll

[blade21cn]

(A) is incorrect, because it contradicts the point made in the last paragraph as to the explanation of the phenomenon described in the passage.

(C) only covers the last paragraph and ignores the bulk of the passage.

I eliminated (E) because it just expresses that perfume-making and oil painting should be treated equally, while the passage mainly focuses on the fact that perfume-making is undervalued, not so much about oil painting.

Thus, I'm down to (B) and (D). Even though neither is inclusive in terms of the last paragraph which provides an explanation of why perfume was undervalued, but since they still cover the bulk of the passage (¶1-3) and none of the other answer choices incorporates both why perfume shouldn't be undervalued (¶1-3) and why perfume is undervalued (¶4), they are my contenders. However, I got it wrong by choosing (B).

This is how I now justify the correct answer. The main difference between (B) and (D) to me is (B) is a concrete part (a masterpiece perfume v. a masterpiece in music or painting) and (D) is an abstract whole (great perfumes in general v. great works of art in general). If the concrete part, (B), is correct, the abstract whole, (D), is also correct; but if the abstract whole, (D), is correct, the concrete part, (B), is not necessarily correct. Since there's only one correct answer, the preference should be given to the abstract whole, (D). I'm not sure if my line of thought is valid. Am I committing a part-to-whole or whole-to-part fallacy here? Can anyone validate or discredit my rationale? Thanks!

[James Finch]

Hi Blade,

The bigger issue with (B) is that it is a comparative answer, between perfume on the one hand and music and painting on the other. As a Main Point question, we need something that encapsulates the ultimate conclusion, the real point, of the passage; what is it that the author is trying to say with this piece? Is it that the reaction great perfume evokes is as strong as the one provoked by paintings or music? Or is that idea a premise for another conclusion, such as one that argues for perfume being considered an artistic medium equal to painting or music?

A good Prephrase here would identify the idea that perfume making is an art and deserves to be respected as such. If we can get to this idea, we can see that an answer like (B) actually serves as a premise for a conclusion similar to (D). Once here, the correct answer becomes clear, since we're looking for a conclusion, not a premise.

Hope this clears things up!