OFFICIAL EXPLANATIONHappy fourth... day of the competition, that is. We have another SC question before us; so far, these have proved devilishly difficult for the group on the whole. I did not write the questions with trickery in mind. Rather, I was hoping to craft engaging sentences that provided not just one, but a few talking points, the way a real GMAT™ question does. Are you ready to get to the bottom of another one?
Quote:
By the eighteenth century, Ossian, a legendary Scottish poet and storyteller from the third century, became as revered and mythical of a literary figure as Homer or Dante, and the French general Napoleon Bonaparte so admired the poems of the Scottish bard to where he commissioned two paintings to be hung in his summer palace.
(A) became as revered and mythical of a literary figure as Homer or Dante, and the French general Napoleon Bonaparte so admired the poems of the Scottish bard to where
Right out of the gates, we encounter a crucial part of the sentence, and the simple past
became does not agree with the surrounding contextual clues, namely the opening phrase, which references the eighteenth century through a progressive
by instead of a moment-in-time
in, and the appositive phrase, which tells us that Ossian lived in the third century. That is, we find it difficult to resolve such conflicting temporal information without pausing—someone from the third century
became celebrated
by the eighteenth, fifteen hundred years later.
The second part of the original sentence that is off is the inclusion of
of within a comparison, one that follows a basic
as _____ a [noun 1] as [noun 2]. Sure, native speakers sometimes speak this way, so the sound test might not work against this one (not that you should be using such a method to eliminate answers), but
of is a completely superfluous and unidiomatic element.
Finally, the degree to which Napoleon admired the poems also follows a certain idiomatic construct:
so _____ that. Again, some people in casual conversation might indicate the extent of something by dropping in
to where, but that will not fly here.
With three compelling reasons to eliminate (A), we can safely check for better answers ahead.
Quote:
(B) became as revered and mythical a literary figure as Homer, Dante, and the French general Napoleon Bonaparte, who admired the poems of the Scottish bard so that
The first issue is no different from before, but the second is where things get interesting. Notice that Homer and Dante are now mentioned as literary figures one and two in a series that ends with
the French general Napoleon Bonaparte. A knowledge of history is not required to ascertain whether Napoleon was a
revered and mythical poet: he is described as a
general instead (not a warrior poet either, for you fans of
Braveheart out there). This is a serious distortion of the logical meaning of the sentence, one that cannot be overlooked. Just in case you missed that one, though, there is a third issue that we can use to argue against (B). By moving
so, the extent-to-which marker turns into an explanatory marker instead, and
who admired... so that is not a correct way to express that the general admired some poems to the extent that he ordered something. One, two, three strikes you're out.
Quote:
(C) had become as revered and mythical of a literary figure as Homer or Dante, and the French general Napoleon Bonaparte admired the poems of the Scottish bard, so
First off, notice that the issue with
became has now been rectified with a past perfect
had become. The change correctly bridges the time gap between the third and eighteenth centuries, as presented in the sentence. We are no longer talking about two distinct periods in time, but about all the time that passed between them, enough time to allow the reputation of Ossian to grow. The same problem from (A) persists with the superfluous
of, however. There is simply no way to justify its inclusion. Finally, an ambiguous logical disconnect occurs at the tail-end of the sentence by (once again) shifting the position of
so. That is, by using
so as a conjunction to join two independent clauses, the sentence now outlines a causal relationship, only this one does not quite add up in a clearcut manner:
1) the French general Napoleon Bonaparte admired the poems of the Scottish bard
2) so he commissioned two paintings to be hung in his summer palace
Did you catch it? The issue is subtle, but you should be wondering,
What does admiring poems have to do with commissioning paintings to be hung? Paintings of what? I did not mark the conjunction in
red because
so is grammatically sound. But in terms of conveyed meaning, this sentence is unclear. It
could mean the same as what the original sentence lays out, but it could also be presenting two separate pieces of information and be tying them together clumsily with
so. All things considered, this cannot be our answer.
Quote:
(D) had become as revered and mythical of a literary figure as Homer, Dante, and the French general Napoleon Bonaparte, who so admired the poems of the Scottish bard that
There is nothing new here to discuss, in terms of the problematic elements that allow us to eliminate this answer choice. All that I will add is that the correct idiom
so _____ that appears at the end of the underlined portion. Sometimes you can lean on
wrong answers to point you in the right direction, so do not be too quick to completely write off an answer choice.
Quote:
(E) had become as revered and mythical a literary figure as Homer or Dante, and the French general Napoleon Bonaparte so admired the poems of the Scottish bard that
All the issues from earlier have been fixed.
Became has morphed into
had become; the comparison drops the unnecessary
of and does
not include the general himself; the
so _____ that idiom is correctly employed; and, most importantly, the meaning of the sentence is clear: Napoleon admired the poems of Ossian so much that he, the general, commissioned two paintings, presumably of the bard instead of poems, to be hung in his summer palace. This is the best answer of the lot.
I hope you enjoyed this one. As always, good luck with your studies.
- Andrew
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17 Dec 2020, 07:00
45%
(medium)
33%
(01:53)
wrong 
