Note: I have been adding to my response throughout the day, and by the time I finished, IanStewart had already written a quite similar response above. Even so, I am reproducing my response in full.
beeblebrox wrote:
Hi,
I am not satisfied with any explanations:
With his last three plays
Mr. Leonard has turned increasingly toward autobiographical material and, (C) as Eugene O'Neill's did, has come to terms with a difficult personal history through their
What I understand from this sentence is that :
- Mr. Leonard has turned increasingly toward autobiographical material , as Eugene's plays did (as his/her plays turned increasingly towards autobiographical material?). My question is why is Mr. Leonard being compared to Eugene's plays? Plays did not come to terms with a difficult personal history. Which makes me think that Eugene and Leonard must be compared. This aspect comes neatly with Option (E)
(E)
as with Eugene O'Neill, has come to terms with a difficult personal history through his
which I understand means that Leo turned towards autobiographical material as was the case with Eugene.
IanStewart AndrewN can you please help sir?
What did I miss?
Hello,
beeblebrox. In full disclosure, this question has the distinction of being the only official SC question I have missed while pursuing an entirely incorrect line of reasoning, at least if the question has been transcribed correctly or is even official. If we ignore the comparative elements for a moment to focus on the base structure, we get an unassuming sentence. First, for reference:
Quote:
With his last three plays Mr. Leonard has turned increasingly toward autobiographical material and, like Eugene O'Neill's, have come to terms with a difficult personal history through their dramatizations.
The prepositional phrase is not the subject, so this sentence is about Mr. Leonard. How does the clause round out?
Mr. Leonard has turned toward [something singular]... and [has] come to terms with [something singular].
This part seems easy to follow. It is only when we consider the extra bits and pieces that things get complicated. How about we burn the chaff before we dissect the rest? Answer choices (A) and (D) violate subject-verb agreement, so we are left with (B), (C), and (E).
Quote:
(A) like Eugene O'Neill's have come to terms with a difficult personal history through their
(D) as Eugene O'Neill has done, have come to terms with a difficult personal history through their
With those out of the way, focus again on the non-comparative ending of each answer choice. We can add a bit more information to inform our interpretation of the overall sentence.
(B)/(E) Mr. Leonard has turned toward autobiographical material and has come to terms with a difficult personal history through
his dramatizations.
(C) Mr. Leonard has turned toward autobiographical material and has come to terms with a difficult personal history through
their dramatizations.
I doubt anyone would claim that the former two were incorrect while the latter was the sound option. In a basic
X and Y construct, if X and Y are to be parallel—and they should be virtually transposable without a comma before
and (joining two independent clauses is an entirely different proposition)—then (C) is in a tight spot. But, to be fair, we need to add
plays back to the picture. For the sake of simplicity, we can ignore element X to focus on Y in isolation.
(C) With his last three plays Mr. Leonard has come to terms with a difficult personal history through their dramatizations.
(C.2) With his last three plays Mr. Leonard has come to terms with a difficult personal history through [the plays'] dramatizations.
This
is, in fact, functional, so we cannot write off answer choice (C), and we need to consider the comparative elements. It will be easier to drive a wedge between (B) and (E), since they adopt the same ending.
Quote:
With his last three plays Mr. Leonard has turned increasingly toward autobiographical material and, like Eugene O'Neill's, have come to terms with a difficult personal history through their dramatizations.
(B) like Eugene O'Neill's, has come to terms with a difficult personal history through his
(E) as with Eugene O'Neill, has come to terms with a difficult personal history through his
The possessive in (B) should probably be interpreted strictly—
like Eugene O'Neill's last three plays—since we want a safe answer and should not readily adapt material to fit what we want to be there.
Like should be used in a noun-to-noun comparison,
as for a comparison between actions.
(B) With his last three plays Mr. Leonard has turned increasingly toward autobiographical material and,
like Eugene O'Neill's [last three plays], has come to terms with a difficult personal history through his dramatizations.
The comparison is improperly drawn. The placement of the information about the plays of Eugene O'Neill fits an
as mold:
as these plays did, [with his last three plays Mr. Leonard] has come to terms...Now, we are down to (C) and (E):
Quote:
With his last three plays Mr. Leonard has turned increasingly toward autobiographical material and...
(C) as Eugene O'Neill's did, has come to terms with a difficult personal history through [the plays'] [dramatizations]
(E) as with Eugene O'Neill, has come to terms with a difficult personal history through his [dramatizations]
I can say that I
prefer the usage of
his to refer to Mr. Leonard, but I cannot dismiss (C) for
their, as discussed above. Thus, there is little to separate (C) from (E) except for the comparison that is drawn. The substitute
did in (C) stands for the entire verb phrase
came to terms with a different personal history through the plays' dramatizations. Answer choice (C), then, in full:
(C) With his last three plays Mr. Leonard has turned increasingly toward autobiographical material and, as Eugene O'Neill's last three plays came to terms with a difficult personal history through the plays' dramatizations, has come to terms with a difficult personal history through the plays' dramatizations.
That looks awful, and I wonder if
did is juggling too much information. Specifically, it seems odd to extract from a possessive
Eugene O'Neill's the noun phrase
a difficult personal history. O'Neill himself was not mentioned in the same way that Mr. Leonard was in the first half of this sentence. Yes, I am aware that there are official SC questions in which possessives can later take pronouns—e.g.,
Emily Dickinson's letters... her (in reference to the poet herself)—but
a difficult personal history is not a pronoun.
Answer choice (E) compares playwrights, and, just as before, we are going to get our hands dirty.
(E) With his last three plays Mr. Leonard has turned increasingly toward autobiographical material and, as with Eugene O'Neill, has come to terms with a difficult personal history through his dramatizations.
Now, I suppose we can reasonably interpret
as with as
as was the case with. Is the comparison tenable? In a word, yes. It may not be the best way to draw such a comparison, but we cannot dismiss the answer choice out of hand.
I suppose if I went back and checked my response to the question, I am guessing I had gone for (E). It is a matter of which interpretation is worse, in my view, and I do not think a clear case can be made for (C).
Phew! That was a long response, written over many hours during a workday. Perhaps it will prove useful.
- Andrew
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