One of Hannibal's successful battle techniques was charging wild

A) to command that his men should part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing
B) to command his men in parting, creating channels that allow the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill
C) commanding his men to part, creating channels allowing the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill
D) commanding that his men should part, creating channels to allow the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill
E) commanding his men to part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing


A and B are out because of parallelism (was charging:was commanding)


The word command needs subjunctive "to". So D is out
E is out for parallelism which is highlighted above

C is the correct answer

Kudos +1 if like it

One of Hannibal's successful battle techniques was charging wild elephants directly at the Roman armies, trampling infantry and inducing disarray in the ranks, but Scipio's successful counterstrategy was to command that his men should part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing the elephants behind his ranks.

A) to command that his men should part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing to command is not parallel
B) to command his men in parting, creating channels that allow the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill same as A
C) commanding his men to part, creating channels allowing the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill correct
D) commanding that his men should part, creating channels to allow the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill command and should can not go together
E) commanding his men to part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing

One of Hannibal's successful battle techniques was charging wild elephants directly at the Roman armies, trampling infantry and inducing disarray in the ranks, but Scipio's successful counterstrategy was to command that his men should part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing the elephants behind his ranks.

A) to command that his men should part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing
B) to command his men in parting, creating channels that allow the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill
C) commanding his men to part, creating channels allowing the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill
D) commanding that his men should part, creating channels to allow the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill
E) commanding his men to part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing

Imo C it has all the parallel elements .

Option A has multiple errors them is ambiguous.Charging and to command are not parallel.
Option B again has the same error to command
Option D Should can not be used in a sentence which has commanding verb.
Option E has them which is ambiguous.

Official Explanation

This one is tricky because it involves parallelism at a couple different levels. First of all, we are comparing Hannibal's vs. Scipio's approach. Hannibal's technique was "charging", so we suspect Scipio's counterstrategy would be parallel to this: "commanding", not "to command." This makes us suspicious of (A) & (B). If there were no parallelism to consider, the use of the infinitive in this context would be a perfectly correct construction.


After the word command/commanding, the most natural idiom is an infinitive:to command B to do X. The "that"-clause structure here, "that his men should part", is very awkward, and does not fit. Because of this, we reject (A) & (D).

The structure "with them killing" is 100% wrong. In general, the GMAT hates "with" + [noun] + [participle] to encapsulate action. If we want to talk about action, we need to use a full bona fide verb. This structure appears in both (A).

We know that Scipio is commanding his men to do something: what is he commanding them to do? He is commanding two things: (a) to part, and (b) to kill the elephants. These two actions need to be in parallel as well. Furthermore, the correction idiom is "command" + [infinitive], while the construction "command" + [gerund] is 100% wrong. Choice (C) correctly has two infinitives, "to part" and "to kill". Choice (C) is the only answer that has correct parallelism on both levels, so this is the only possible answer. (C) is correct.

Both (D) and (E) lose the important distinction between the two things that Scipio commanded: to part and to kill. Instead, (D) and (E) both create a list of participles and in doing so Scipio is commanding only that his men part, a major change in meaning. Remember, parallelism is not automatically correct especially when it entails a major change in meaning.

daagh sir, need guidance:
With regards to Option C, isn't to kill an infinitive which is paired with participles... are such elements even parallel?

Regards

One of Hannibal's successful battle techniques was charging wild elephants directly at the Roman armies, trampling infantry and inducing disarray in the ranks, but Scipio's successful counterstrategy was to command that his men should part, creating channels that allowed the elephants simply to pass through, with them killing the elephants behind his ranks.

C. commanding his men to part, creating channels allowing the elephants simply to pass through, and then to kill

Youraise
Hi,

'creating channels that allowed … ' is a modifier of the previous clause namely, "Scipio's strategy was commanding his men to part"
The modifier is not an essential item of the core of the sentence and hence does not compete with 'to kill' "To part and to kill are the chief elements of Scipio's strategy and they only required to be parallel and not the modifier's parts.
Yes, it is indeed a tricky thing to decide which need to be parallel and which need not.

egmat daagh

Please check my approach, let me know if I am wrong.

I didn't check for parallelism (although I should have)

1st check- "creating channels that allowed", here, "that" modifies "channels", now if we go literally with the meaning-based approach, channels don't allow(give permission) themselves for anything.

therefore- A,B,E is wrong.

In C and D
2nd check- "commanding" modifies "Scipio's successful counterstrategy", also "that" again modifies "Scipio's successful counterstrategy". There was really no need to use both commanding and that. So on this basis, I eliminated D.

Although I did it correctly, just wanted to know whether this approach is fine or not?
Also after reading the comments, I checked for parallelism, and I have one doubt about it. In C "to part" and "to kill" is parallel but wouldn't "then" before "to kill" would create an issue?

+1 Kudos if my approach is correct for this question

Isn't command a subjunctive verb ?
In what cases it can work with infinitive as well?

egmat

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