Sartre, an inadvertent guru, had an opinion on everything, painfully

This question is mostly about parallelism. The non-underlined portion ends with a list of attributes (describing Sartre's opinion), so we're expecting another attribute to complete the list. The first two attributes (“painfully considered, elaborately reasoned”) show us the pattern: adverb adjective, adverb adjective.

Choice (A) gives us exactly what we expect: another attribute that describes Sartre's opinion, in the form "adverb adjective" ("often changed"). So (A) is looking pretty good, but let's see if we can eliminate the others.


If we only had "usually changed" instead of "it was usually changed," then (B) would be tempting. Again, the first two elements of the list are in the form "adverb + adjective," so we expect something similar in the final part.

Instead, we get "pronoun + verb + adverb + adjective"--the addition of a subject pronoun and verb ("it was") makes it seem like we are starting an entirely new sentence, rather than continuing the list of attributes.

That's not what we want, so we can get rid of (B).


This would be fine if the “that was” came before the whole list: “…had an opinion on everything that was painfully considered, elaborately reasoned, [and] often changed.” But at the end of the list, "that was" doesn't make any sense and throws off the parallelism. (C) is out.


Here the parallelism might technically be ok because we have another attribute that describes Sartre's opinion ("changing often"). But unlike in (A), we don't get a nice, clean (and easy-to-follow) list of "adverb + adjective" pairs.

Moreover, since we are talking about Sartre's opinion in the past, the opinion shouldn’t be “changing often"--this seems to imply that the opinion is STILL changing in the present.

In contrast, "considered" and "reasoned" suggest actions that were performed ON the opinions in the past--the opinions were painfully considered BY Sartre, and the opinions were elaborately reasoned BY Sartre. That pattern doesn't work with the third item: "The opinions were changing often by Sartre" doesn't make sense.

On the other hand, choice (A) implies that "the opinions were often changed by Sartre," which makes more sense and fits with the pattern of the first two attributes. This makes (A) the better choice, so we can eliminate (D).


You can get rid of (E) pretty quickly because it doesn't fit with the parallel structure at all. Using this option, the list of attributes has the form: "(1) adverb adjective, (2) adverb adjective, (3) pronoun ("one") noun modifier ("[that] he often changed")--the parallelism is clearly better in (A).

That's enough reason to get rid of (E). But if (and only if) you'd like nerd out and dive a little deeper on this one, keep reading...

Aside from the obvious deviation from the part of speech pattern, there is another really subtle reason that the parallelism isn't ideal here:

• The first two items in the list describe what Sartre’s opinion was like, without mentioning specific action by Sartre: his opinion was considered and reasoned. (If you like the jargon, this is the passive voice). As we saw in option (D), the first two elements imply actions performed ON the opinions.
• But with "one he often changed," "he" is the subject of the verb "changed." This active construction gives Sartre more agency—he is the one specifically changing the opinion, as opposed to the opinion having been changed BY him.
• Simply put, because two of the elements in the list are in the passive voice and one is in the active, the parallelism isn't as good as it is in option (A). Again, you don't need to go there to get rid of (E), but this gives us one more vote for (A) over (E) .

In any case, (A) is our best option.

I hope that helps!

Three things are describing the opinion Sartre had, but except B, no other choice is sporting the legendary 'and' before the last item. Even B doesn't stand scrutiny because the last item is a clause while the previous ones are past-participle adjectives. I don't know what is up the OG's sleeve in this question. Let's wait until the cat is out of the bag.

Official Explanation

Parallelism; Diction; Logical predication

The sentence is intended to predicate frequent change of Sartre's opinions. We need to find the answer choice that most effectively does so.

Note that this modifier in option A, consisting of the adverbial modifier often and the verbal adjective changed, is most closely parallel to the two preceding predicates.

A. Correct. This choice is correct for the reasons stated above.

B. In this choice the pronoun it could refer either to opinion or to everything, and the force of usually is unclear. Furthermore, this choice is not parallel in structure to the preceding modifiers painfully considered and elaborately reasoned.

C. In this choice, the relative pronoun that normally has the closest preceding noun, pronoun, or noun phrase as its referent. However, in this context, everything is clearly not the intended referent. Furthermore, this choice is not parallel in structure to the preceding modifiers painfully considered and elaborately reasoned.

D. This choice is not parallel in structure to the preceding modifiers painfully considered and elaborately reasoned. This option also unnecessarily inverts the adjective and adverb, creating a different order from the order in the previous two modifiers.

E. This choice is not parallel in structure to the preceding modifiers painfully considered and elaborately reasoned.

The correct answer is A.

How is parallelism maintained in option A?
Please help.

i) Adverb (painfully) + adjective/past-participle (considered)
ii) Adverb (elaborately) + adjective/past-participle (reasoned)
iii) Adverb (often) + adjective/past-participle (changed)

EducationAisle,
Thanks for the explanation, but how are we avoiding a conjunction(&) to connect 3 phrases together.

You are right Sunny. Ideally, there should have been an and; however, this is just an acceptable writing style, especially used to emphasize attributes.

Hi AyeeshaJ, curious to know which option did you choose?

The reason is that the presence/absence of and is not really being tested in this sentence, since none of the options uses and.

Perhaps you are confused with option B. Let's look at B. It says:

Sartre, an inadvertent guru, had an opinion on everything, painfully considered, elaborately reasoned, and it was usually changed.

The above sentence is also missing an and. With the and, the sentence should actually be:

Sartre, an inadvertent guru, had an opinion on everything, painfully considered and elaborately reasoned, and it was usually changed.

Hence, while the absence of an and in option A is admittedly counter-intuitive, but a non-issue here.

GMATNinja AjiteshArun

Your valuable inputs on this one please.

I just got a different idea to justify A.

What if his opinions are sometimes painfully considered, sometimes, elaborately reasoned, sometimes both, sometimes elaborately reasoned and often changed, sometimes only often changed?

There are multitudes of combinations that we can create and thus we cannot use either an “AND” that will signify ALL are necessary or an “OR” that will signify his opinions were one of the many kinds and not any combination thereof.

Posted from my mobile device

As expected with all GMAT Advanced questions, this one is tough.

Don't look for the right answer. Identify the wrong answers.

We have a list of three items which are in the form: adjective + past tense verb.

Let's eliminate answer choices that are not parallel with this form. And let's be stingy with any answer choice that introduces pronouns, conjunctions, or any other words in our 3 verb list.


This answer choice is parallel with our list of 3 -ed ending verbs. Why do we not need an "and" in this final item? I truly don't know. Maybe GMATNinja can assist.

However, I'm confident that B, C, D, and E all have definite errors.


What is "it" referring to? Opinion? Fine. But why do we need to restate "opinion" with a pronoun at the end of our verb list? The pronoun is not necessary to understand the meaning of the sentence.

The it and the was are not needed and are completely wrong.

This answer breaks the parallelism of our 3 verb list.


Why are we using "that"? Further, there is no need to introduce the verb "was."

This answer breaks the parallelism of our 3 verb list.


Parallelism. We have a list of three verbs: considered, reasoned, and changed.

We need our underlined verb to be consistent and have an -ed ending. Also, changing is an adverb, it's not even a verb!


By introducing the pronoun "he", this answer choices creates a run-on sentence.

This answer breaks the parallelism of our 3 verb list.

Hi Vinit800HBS,

I didn't read it like that, although I think the possibility does exist. I read it as we would if an and were there, just with additional emphasis on the final element.

For anyone wondering why the GMAT dropped the and: this was almost certainly to try to throw test takers off. Dropping an and (or or or but...) is a way to make the sentence flow a little differently, and is very much "allowed". The most common example of this that I can think of is "I came; I saw; I conquered".

Although, I got the answer wrong But when looked through the post of moderators and Tutors ,I was wandering how moderators s quickly changes the concepts which they usually taught in their long blogs posted on GMAT club. If this question was not from OG, Moderators would have discarded this question. Since this one is from OG, Moderators are saying the this is style and usage.
Just want to say that Sir, Please stick to the concepts which you have taught in your blogs on GMAT club. If you find a questions which does not have solid reasoning, you cannot up saying that its a style and usage.

Hi Vishnu, can you let us know which option you chose and which 'style and usage' are you specifically referring to?

daagh EducationAisle

These modifiers are adverbial phrases right ? and they are modifying the noun 'an opinion' ? Can an adverb modify a noun ? What am I missing here ?

In the above phrases, the adjectives/participles (considered, reasoned, changed) are modifying the noun opinion.

Each adverb (painfully, elaborately, often) is just modifying the corresponding adjective.

Hi EMPOWERgmatVerbal EducationAisle

Isn't option E run-on as well?

Hi shanks2020, E is not a run-on. A run-on is when two Independent clauses are connected by just a comma.

In E, the only Independent clause is:

Sartre, an inadvertent guru, had an opinion on everything, painfully considered, elaborately reasoned

Following is not an Independent clause:

one he often changed

This is equivalent to:

one (opinion that) he often changed

So, E says:

opinion that he often changed

The structure for this is:

Phrase (opinion) + a Dependent clause (that he often changed)

Grammatically, Phrase + a Dependent clause acts as a phrase (not as an Independent clause).