GradeSaver (TM) ClassicNotes: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

As a teacher who reads study guides as part of teaching student to evaluate secondary sources for literature my students write essays about I have to say this is a terrible source. I share exampls of analysis from this guide in class to laugh at with my students of examples of why sources like these are unreliable. Explanations like the allusion to John the Baptist in Grenouille's name being because his mother gets beheaded like John the Baptist is just one of many laughable and contrived arguments fobbed off as reasonable analysis while completely missing the way Grenouille's perfumes serve as the holy water with which he baptises humanity it into his monstrous and corrupt nature. Other absurdities include lengthy considerations about amphibious tales of tadpoles and how frogs lack them because Grenouiile's names translates to frog in English. There are some insights, but the nonsense like the examples I give outweigh these.

I generally recommend this kind of thing to students who have read the original book and are struggling with the material. This cheater book is mostly story summary and the analysis sections are brief and cover the fairly obvious. To be fair, this would be a hard book to summarize effectively because the devil is in the details.

written well