Hey You Guys,

This is an interesting question, so I thought I'd weigh in. The correct answer is actually C, not D. This is a parallelism issue, which we can recognize by finding the word "and". Whenever you see conjunctions like "and" or "or", ask yourself what elements need to be parallel. In this case, we can use the second element more effectively.

The word "made" comes after the "and", this means that we must be paralleling verbs. The other verb is "turned". We cannot change the subject of both of these verbs: "the political climate". So did the political climate make "him..." or "his..."? It wouldn't make any sense for the political climate to make him do something. That would imply that Shostakovich had to DO something. But what the climate did was make the performance of his symphony impossible. This can be reworded as "made his having the piece performed impossible".

This is an example of a verb phrase acting as a noun, like "Having good friends is a great thing". In this case, the action of "having good friends" is serving as a noun in the sentence. Likewise "having the piece performed" is a noun, the object of the verb "make" (which you can even think of as "make impossible" to simplify things in your head). Just to round this out, "his" is a possessive pronoun modifying the action "having the piece performed". "Him" is an object pronoun, and illogical here.

Hope that helps. Great question!

Tommy Wallach
ManhattanGMAT

hi expert
why we are not choosing had not . original sentence is negative & answer is had hardly entered .
what is the problem in option B

Hi jafy,

had not hardly is not the correct idiomatic usage and is a wordy construction.
had hardly entered conveys the logical meaning that the composition was in its nascent stage.
The main decision to be made while answering was between C and D , which has been explained above.
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Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony had not hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made him having the piece performed impossible.


A. had not hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made him having "not" is extra, hardly entered conveys the meaning properly.

B. had not hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made his having Same as A

C. had hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made his having Correct. The intent is to convey the fact that the play couldn't be performed due to adverse political climate.

D. had hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made him having Conveys incorrect meaning by using him, the composer is not himself doing something.

E. had hardly entered rehearsals when the political climate turned against the composer and made himself having Incorrect usage of the pronoun "himself"

Kudos Please!

Can someone elaborate more on (C) and (D). I am confused with these

So basically it is like -- political climate made his performance impossible. The phrase -having the piece performed - works like "performance". Am I right?

Notice the word 'and' in both the options. 'And' means parallelism.

the political climate turned against the composer and the political climate made his having the piece performed impossible.

the political climate turned against the composer and the political climate made him having the piece performed impossible.


The first sentence implies that the political climate did not allow Shostakovich to perform his Fourth Symphony. Whereas, the second sentence doesn't make any logical sense. A subtle but a decisive difference.

Hope its clear now.
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The three-two split here is pretty easy to resolve. “had not hardly” is wordy and awkward, “had hardly” conveys the same meaning but much more concisely and cleanly. So now we are left with C D and E. The issue here is definitely one of parallelism. We need to look at the part of the sentences after the word “and”. C is the one that seems to be correct. This is the one that best conveys the meaning of the sentence that due to the political climate the symphony could not be performed.

'Not hardly' is idiomatically wrong and unnecessarily wordy.

'Having the piece performed' is a gerund. 'His' can be used before a gerund as an adjective. 'Him', which is a pronoun, cannot be used.

Therefore C

GMATNinja generis can you explain why Using "His" in place of "him" is wrong. I know it's possessive noun parallelism error in D. But D is more meaningful than C. Please elaborate.

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