Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony had not hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made him having the piece performed impossible.

A. had not hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made him having
B. had not hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made his having
C. had hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made his having
D. had hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made him having
E. had hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made himself having

Please explain


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Cheers,
SD

Hey You Guys,

This is an interesting question, so I thought I'd weigh in. The correct answer is actually C, not D. This is a parallelism issue, which we can recognize by finding the word "and". Whenever you see conjunctions like "and" or "or", ask yourself what elements need to be parallel. In this case, we can use the second element more effectively.

The word "made" comes after the "and", this means that we must be paralleling verbs. The other verb is "turned". We cannot change the subject of both of these verbs: "the political climate". So did the political climate make "him..." or "his..."? It wouldn't make any sense for the political climate to make him do something. That would imply that Shostakovich had to DO something. But what the climate did was make the performance of his symphony impossible. This can be reworded as "made his having the piece performed impossible".

This is an example of a verb phrase acting as a noun, like "Having good friends is a great thing". In this case, the action of "having good friends" is serving as a noun in the sentence. Likewise "having the piece performed" is a noun, the object of the verb "make" (which you can even think of as "make impossible" to simplify things in your head). Just to round this out, "his" is a possessive pronoun modifying the action "having the piece performed". "Him" is an object pronoun, and illogical here.

Hope that helps. Great question!

Tommy Wallach
ManhattanGMAT
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Tommy Wallach | Manhattan GMAT Instructor | San Francisco

Manhattan GMAT Discount | Manhattan GMAT Reviews

Tommy --- a million thanks to you.
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Cheers,
SD

C, should be "his having"

It just sounds "cleaner" to my ear because I used to get this wrong in English class all the time (10 years ago...) so this lesson stuck to me.

I received this email today (from a vendor to my supervisor):
"I’m not sure why someone can’t simply read my previous email to the questions below but perhaps me copying and pasting the answers into this email will help."

The "me" should be "my" and it'll read much better. Thanks for the explanation too Tommy.
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Yeah it's between C and D at first look, and after reading the explanation it seems C... but need to practice more of such questions!!
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Nice explanation, I chosen D but after your explanation, i can what mistake i did. +1 Kudos

Strike one: 'made him having [the piece performed]' makes no sense. it should be 'made his having [the piece performed]'
--> eliminate A, D and E

Strike two: should be 'had hardly entered rehearsals' and not 'had not hardly entered rehearsals' --> eliminate B

Answer: C
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At first glance I would have chosen D, so thank you TommyWallach for the great explanation of why C was the correct answer.

wonderful explanation. thnx!
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great question and even great explanation by Tommy. If these question would appear in GMAT then which level question would that be? just curious.............