mikemcgarry wrote:
Marcus Junius Brutus (85 – 42 BCE) became friends with Julius Caesar, but he participated in the conspiracy that assassinated Caesar, and in subsequent centuries rose and fell according to the tides of various interpretations — as a treacherous villain in Dante and noble hero in Shakespeare.
(A) he participated in the conspiracy that assassinated Caesar, and in subsequent centuries rose and fell
(B) he participated in the conspiracy that assassinated Caesar, and in subsequent centuries rising and falling
(C) participated in the conspiracy that assassinated Caesar, and in subsequent centuries his reputation rose and fell
(D) participated in the conspiracy that assassinated Caesar, and in subsequent centuries his reputation rising and falling
(E) participated in the conspiracy that assassinated Caesar, and in subsequent centuries rose and fellFor a full discussion of parallelism and it's pitfalls, as well as the solution to this question, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/parallelis ... orrection/Experts, anything else you would like to add about typical parallelism traps on the GMAT SC?
Mike
Ok, I will give a shot..
Clause 1-
Marcus Junius Brutus (85 – 42 BCE)became friends with Julius Caesar this is an independent clause with markus as a subject and became as a verb, julias is the object.
Clause 2-
he participated in the conspiracy that assassinated Caesar, and in subsequent centuries rose and fell according to the tides of various interpretations. ----> the use of "he" is ambiguous here, although the original questions uses he to refer to markus, but its still ambiguous for eg consider the construction, "I became friends with mary, but she betrayed me". In this construction "she" reflects to mary. similarly he in the sentence can reflect to julius too.
Quote:
2. Although, in some cases, a comma can be used to indicate logical separation or to emphasize a phrase, without such reasons, it should not be used to separate two non-independent clauses without a reason. What purpose does the comma after "with Julius Caesar" serve?
now replying to the above poster. comma is used after julias to separate the clause 1(independent clause) with clause 2(dependent clause) which is perfectly grammatical.
Quote:
I have a couple of discussion points about this question.
1. What does "as a treacherous villain in Dante and noble hero in Shakespeare" modify? I assume that it is supposed to modify "Marcus Junius Brutus. But, it's so far away from "Marcus Junius Brutus".
modifier- as a treacherous villain in Dante and noble hero in Shakespeare. again in response to above poster, this is the clause modifying the "marcus" in the original sentence as the clause 2 begins with "he" who points back to marcus and the modifier in this instance modifies "he"
now another problem is "he"(marcus) cannot fall and rise in subsequent century. this is nonsensical. therefore we need something like his "reputation" to fall and rise which is perfectly fine.
due to above reason we can straight away eliminate A and B and E, as we need "reputation" here to fall and rise. between C and D. D uses "his reputation rising and falling" incorrectly. so C is the clear winner here.
hope this helps:)