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

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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