For parts of his life, Burroughs, a writer in self-imposed exile, and

Dear KS15,

First of all, my friend, sayantanc2k already gave a good explanation which I will repeat. We use "like" to compare nouns and "as" to compare verbs or clauses. In this sentence, we could compare either, so "as" is acceptable. If you want an explanation of all five options, please refer to the OE, given in the link in my initial post in this page.

Mike

Hi,
the things being compared here are, life of burrughs and joyce, so AS is correct here..
left and chose should be used to talk of actions of Joyce...
Joyce lived a generation earlier to Burroughs, so this aspect too should come out clearly..
ONLY C is left

A lacks parallelism. D is wrong, two independent clauses connected by a semicolon. B is kind of awkward, ‘close to the way that’ is needlessly wordy. E is also clearly poorly constructed and awkward. C is the best choice.

Hi All,

To me, Option C "Burroughs was a writer in self-imposed exile, somewhat as Joyce, who lived a generation earlier, left Ireland and chose" had some ambiguity about whether Burroughs or Joyce lived a generation earlier. While trying to review it objectively, I thought option D was the most clear in the meaning it was trying to convey even if that meaning was slightly different to what might have been intended in the original sentence.

What's wrong with my line of reasoning here? I have just begun my GMAT prep and SC is my weakest link so any help would be appreciated!

Hey there ishwarSubra
Thank you for the query.
I can see a brilliant question here, but this thread lacks an appropriate explanation.

Let me try and help you guys

Now, whenever we deal with complex comparison questions, like this one, looking at the meaning aspect is the trick.

For parts of his life, Burroughs, a writer in self-imposed exile, and in a similar way, Joyce lived a generation earlier, leaving Ireland and choosing to write about his homeland from a distance.

Meaning Analysis
The sentence presents a comparison here between the life of Burroughs and the life of Joyce. The sentence starts by saying that during Burroughs life he was a writer. What type of writer he was? He was a writer in self-imposed exile. Now to understand the comparison correctly it is important to first understand what ‘a writer in self-imposed exile’ means. This phrase means that Burroughs was a writer who left the country on his own free will, rather than being made to leave. Now in this similar way, Joyce who was of the previous generation from Burroughs also left his county. He felt his county Ireland and choose to pen down details of his hometown.
So, to summarize the sentence is comparing the way both the writers Burroughs and Joyce left their own countries. This is the intended logical meaning of the sentence.

Now let's assess each Answer choice and find the correct one

(A) Burroughs, a writer in self-imposed exile, and in a similar way, Joyce lived a generation earlier, leaving Ireland and choosing.
This choice is actually comparing Burroughs life to the generation of Joyce. It seems that they both were similar in living in a generation. This meaning is incorrect as explained in the meaning analysis above.

(B) Burroughs was a writer in self-imposed exile, close to the way that Joyce lived a generation earlier, leaving Ireland and choosing.
This meaning conveys that a generation earlier, Joyce left Ireland and choose to write. Also, it seems that the comparison here is done between the writing life of Burroughs and the generation of Joyce. This meaning is incorrect as explained in the meaning analysis above.

(C) Burroughs was a writer in self-imposed exile, somewhat as Joyce, who lived a generation earlier, left Ireland and chose
This choice presents the perfect comparison between the life of Burroughs and Joyce. Correct

(D) Burroughs was a writer in self-imposed exile; a generation earlier, Joyce was a similar writer in self-imposed exile, leaving Ireland to choose
This choice somewhat says that both of them were in self-imposed exile, but this choice also means that they were similar writers. This choice, therefore, adds additional similarity between them. The intended meaning does not imply that they had similar writing styles. They are only similar in the way they left their countries and they both are writers.

(E) a writer in self-imposed exile, Burroughs was similar to Joyce a generation earlier, leaving Ireland and choosing
This choice says that Burroughs was like Joyce a generation earlier, whereas we know that Joyce lived in the earlier generation. So this meaning is opposite to the intended meaning. Also, this choice compares the way both left Ireland and chose to write. From the intended meaning we know that Joyce left Ireland, but there is no information about which country Burroughs left. This meaning is incorrect as explained in the meaning analysis above.

If you like the explanation, do appreciate

Thanks Anmol! I appreciate the explanation, it definitely is helpful!

I guess my confusion here stems from why there is no discussion about the ambiguity of whether C refers to Joyce or Burroughs. The phrase could read as either Burrough or Joyce living a generation earlier, choosing to leave Ireland and writing about it from a distance.

So is it fair to say that despite the ambiguity in Option C, it is still the closest in intended meaning to the original sentence? Again, to me C seems open to interpretation. D, while altering the meaning, is less ambiguous.

Hi Mike,

I don't think that the sentence 'as Joyce, who lived a generation earlier, left Ireland and chose ...' is a clause as it is having a subject 'Joyce', but not active verb. What follows after 'Joyce' is relative clause, but that doesn't make the sentence 'Joyce, who lived ...' a complete clause. In that sense, 'as' doesn't suit here, IMO, to be able to compare two clauses as one clause is missing.

I stand myself corrected here... I think that the relative clause 'who lived a generation earlier' has a single verb 'lived' and doesn't carry additional verbs, 'left' and 'chose', as I was presuming. So in that sense, verbs 'left' and 'chose' belong to 'Joyce' and hence complete a clause. I drew this correction because I noticed the absence of ',' between the verb 'left' and 'and chose', making it clear that verbs 'left' and 'chose' are not in series with the verb 'lived'.

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