Much like Macbeth when he interprets the witches’ prophecies all too

Much like Macbeth when he interprets the witches’ prophecies all too literally, the mysterious harpooner who Ahab takes aboard the Pequod has the captain accepting his strange prophecies without questioning their hidden meaning.

A. the mysterious harpooner who Ahab takes aboard the Pequod has the captain accepting his strange prophecies without questioning their hidden meaning
Incorrect Who is not the correct pronoun to use in this case. We need an objective pronoun for the verb "takes". Who is used as the subject of a verb or complement of a linking verb.
And, more importantly, incorrect comparison between Macbeth and Harpooner.

B. the strange prophecies of the mysterious harpooner he has taken aboard the Pequod are accepted by Ahab without questioning their hidden meaning
Incorrect Incorrect comparison between Macbeth and Prophecies.

C. the mysterious harpooner whom Ahab takes aboard the Pequod has the captain accepting his strange prophecies without questioning their hidden meaning
Incorrect Since Whom is used as the object of the verb or the object of a preposition, Whom is correctly used as the object of "Ahab takes abord the Pequod."
A good way to test it: Think --> Ahab takes aboard the Pequod he/him. But, more importantly, incorrect comparison between Macbeth and Harpooner.

D. Ahab accepts the strange prophecy of the mysterious harpooner whom he has taken aboard the Pequod, without questioning their hidden meaning
Incorrect "their" has no proper antecedent. Prophecy is singular, so the use of "their" is not correct.

E. Ahab accepts the strange prophecies of the mysterious harpooner he has taken aboard the Pequod, without questioning their hidden meaning
Correct. This choice correctly compares Macbeth interpreting something with Ahab accepting something. Also, prophecies is the correct antecedent to "their".

E cant be the oa, as sentence starts with much like so we cant compare two clauses, as happening in case of E, I request not to post any questions which doesn't have proper source and OA,here I personally vouch for c

Two clauses are NOT compared in option E, but two nouns - "Macbeth" and "Ahab". "Macbeth" has NO verb that makes Macbeth a part of a clause. Of course there is a clause modifier for "Macbeth": "when he interprets the witches’ prophecies all too literally" - but that does not violate comparison between "Macbeth" and "Ahab" - "Macbeth" is OUTSIDE that clause modifier.

Because of the above reason C is wrong - "Macbeth" has been compared wrongly to "the mysterious harpooner ".

I would have agreed on, what you said if there would have been comma b/w Ahab and accepts, i think we need second opinion over here

Please consider the following simpler example:

Like John, I play football.

Do you think there should be a comma between "I" and "like"?

I was unable to understand why one would require a coma between "Ahab" and "accepts". "Ahab" is the subject and "accepts" is the verb, not a modifier. We could discuss effectively if you could elaborate why you feel that a comma is required.

It seems as we have compared noun with clause here, if there would have been any conjunction such as "when" or any modifier starting with ing or ed without comma have been placed b/w "Ahab" and "accepts" such as "Ahab accepting" thin this sentence seems more sound to me

I was unable to understand why one would require a coma between "Ahab" and "accepts". "Ahab" is the subject and "accepts" is the verb, not a modifier. We could discuss effectively if you could elaborate why you feel that a comma is required.[/quote]

OK, I would repeat the example I cited in my previous post:

Like John, I play football.

Would you say that "John" has been compared to the entire clause "I play football". Do we need a comma or modifier after "I" in order that the comparison is valid?

Now an identical structure as that given in the subject question:
Like John, who is the captain of school team, I play football.

Insertion of the non-essential modifier "who is the captain of school team" does not make any difference to the core structure of the sentence: Like X, Y does ... remains valid.

In case you still do not agree that a comma is not required, would you provide an example what should be the structure with comma or a modifier after the second noun?

Like maintains parallelism, hence after 'like' we have 'Macbeth', who interprets the prophecy, so after comma to compare we require another person. In this case 'Ahab'. Keeping this in mind we look at the options -


=> is wrong because of the above explanation(underlined part) along with the usage of 'who'. Here we require 'whom' rather than 'who'. Incorrect


=> is wrong because of the above explanation(underlined part). Incorrect


=> is wrong because of the above explanation(underlined part). Incorrect


=> Here parallelism error in comparison has been corrected but by referring to 'prophecy', it changes the meaning of the sentence. As in the original stem it referred to 'Prophecies'. Incorrect


=> Maintains parallelism in line with the underlined part and also does not change meaning. Correct

\(Hence E\)

Much like Macbeth when he interprets the witches’ prophecies all too literally, the mysterious harpooner who Ahab takes aboard the Pequod has the captain accepting his strange prophecies without questioning their hidden meaning.

This question is all about understanding or more precisely, inferring the meaning of the sentence.

1. Macbeth interprets witches' philosophy
2. The mysterious harpooner's prophecies are accepted by Ahab.

Point 1 is in Active voice. Point 2 is in Passive voice.
The parallelism looks kind of fishy here. The subjects of both the clauses are not parallel. By this time, we could understand that Ahab must be the subject of the sentence because of the following Parallel construction:

1. Macbeth interprets witches' philosophy
2. Ahab interprets the mysterious harpooner's philosophy


This leaves us with Options D and E. Option D has Pronoun-number error. "their" is not agreeing with any of the singular nouns. This leaves us with Option E, which is the correct answer.

E. Ahab accepts the strange prophecies of the mysterious harpooner he has taken aboard the Pequod, without questioning their hidden meaning

A and C incorrectly compare ‘the mysterious harpooner’ to Macbeth, so they are out.

B does the same thing, comparing ‘the prophecies’ to Macbeth instead.

D has an SV disagreement between ‘prophecy’ and ‘their’.



E is the right answer.

Official Explanation

E. The underlined portion must name Ahab immediately in order to clarify the comparison between Ahab and Macbeth. It is Ahab, not the harpooner, as in choices A or C, and not the prophecies, as in choice B, who is much like Macbeth. Choice D has the right structure but has an agreement error between prophecy and their.