VeritasPrepHailey
vasuca10
VeritasPrepHailey mam Kindly enlighten for this question why Option E is incorrect and how the subject is singular nature in this question
Hi
vasuca10! Happy to clarify! (Though I assume you meant to ask why (E) is *correct*

)
In the portion of the sentence at hand: psychologist Bruno Bettelheim asserted that the apparently cruel and arbitrary nature of many fairy tales is actually [an instructive reflection of a child’s natural and necessary “killing off” of successive phases in his or her own development] we're looking for what "is actually an instructive reflection." Here, the
nature of many fairy tales is actually an instructive reflection, so we're looking to agree to the singular term "nature."
If you were uncertain of the logic behind this agreement, you can always take a moment to "slash and burn," or learn to read past, modifying language to get at the core of the agreement in the sentence. In this case, "of many fairy tales" modifies nature, and "of a child's natural and unnecessary killing off of successive phases in his or her own development" modifies reflection. So we could simplify this portion of the sentence to read:
the apparently cruel and arbitrary
nature of many fairy tales is actually an instructive reflection of a child’s natural and necessary “killing off” of successive phases in his or her own developmentThis makes it easy to see that the verb phrase "is actually an instructive reflection" should agree with the singular "nature."
In general, it's important to look out for modifiers, not only when they're actively being tested in a SC example, but also when they're being employed to distract us from the agreement at hand by placing modifying phrases between the verb at hand and its corresponding subject.
I hope this helps!
VeritasPrepHaileyThanks for the nice explanation.
Quote:
D. In his Uses of Enchantment (1976), psychologist Bruno Bettelheim asserted that the apparently cruel and arbitrary nature of many fairy tales actually are an instructive reflection of a child’s natural and necessary “killing off” of successive phases in his or her own development.
Quote:
E. In his Uses of Enchantment (1976), psychologist Bruno Bettelheim asserted that the apparently cruel and arbitrary nature of many fairy tales is actually an instructive reflection of a child’s natural and necessary “killing off” of successive phases in his or her own development.
Can I knock out choice D by seeing the word 'an' , which forces us to use 'is' (not
are) as 'an' indicate something singular, in the non-underlined part?