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

None of the rest - B, C, D or E, fits.
B - to use an And, you need to have an And between considered & elaborately.
C - to use That Clause as parallel, you need to have another that (missing)
D - many ‘experts’ here are right on the explanation.
E - either a run on or not parallel.

So, A must be the answer though it is missing an AND. Gmac’s explanation uses reference to ‘IT’ & ‘that’. Pronoun reference is down my list (way down) and I use it only when I can’t find other errors.
Overall, as others have pointed out, it’s a very weird sentence from gmac. Also, many experts reason to justify after knowing the answer to a question - which is easy to do and without concrete explanations, I don’t buy ‘explanations from experts’

Posted from my mobile device

... many experts reason to justify after knowing the answer to a question - which is easy to do and without concrete explanations, I don’t buy ‘explanations from experts’

Posted from my mobile device

GMATNinja
I am not even able to understand the meaning, can u explain the meaning?

Thanks and regards

What does it mean to say that say OPINION WAS PAINFULLY CONSIDERED?

What does it mean to say that say OPINION WAS PAINFULLY CONSIDERED?

Thanks and regards

I see the parallelism but how this sentence makes sense?
What is the meaning?

Satre (person) had an opinion on everything (ok i understand) ,

But how this is ok? painfully considered, elaborately reasoned, often changed.

I see the parallelism but how this sentence makes sense?
What is the meaning?

Satre (person) had an opinion on everything (ok i understand) ,

But how this is ok? painfully considered, elaborately reasoned, often changed.

In all the courses we are taught to have a parallelism marker for a list.

Here all the parts of the list are connected with a comma. Shouldn't it include "and" for the last part?

How are we supposed to infer this?

In all the courses we are taught to have a parallelism marker for a list.

Here all the parts of the list are connected with a comma. Shouldn't it include "and" for the last part?

How are we supposed to infer this?

Regards
Sarthak

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.

I hope that helps!

When a writer or speaker uses asyndeton, she eliminates conjunctions like "and" or "but." This rhetorical device works to make a speech more dramatic and effective by speeding up its rhythm and pace.

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!