Unlike the people whom settled the Western states after the passage of

Unlike the people whom settled the Western states after the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, the hope of the prospectors and adventurers who came to California during the gold rush was to get rich quickly.

the people whom settled the Western states after the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, the hope of the prospectors and adventurers who came to California during the gold rush was

Unlike (the people)....... (the hope) -> Wrong comparison


the people who settled the Western states after the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, the hope of the prospectors and adventurers who came to California during the gold rush was

Unlike (the people)....... (the hope) -> Wrong comparison

that of the people who settled the Western states after the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, the prospectors and adventurers who came to California during the gold rush hoped

No clear referent for "that"

that of the people whom settled the Western states after the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, the hope of the prospectors and adventurers who came to California during the gold rush was

Wrong use of "whom" (IMO - this option solves the problem identified in Option B i.e. referent for "that")

the people who settled the Western states after the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, the prospectors and adventurers who came to California during the gold rush hoped



Hope this helps

I didn't understand why D is incorrect. Someone plz explain

D is incorrect because

that of the people whom settled the Western states after the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862, the hope of the prospectors and adventurers who came to California during the gold rush was

Here, whom settled conveys the people are not the subject rather the object. So, meaning wise D conveys "Western States settled the people", which is incorrect.

E is much clearer and hence the correct answer.

This answer can be solved by the method of elimination using the two facts:

1.'Unlike the people whom settled' - here the word whom is wrongly used. 'Whom' here indicates a relation with 'the people', while on reading further we realise that a word which points towards/identifies/highlight the kind of people being talked about. If we analyse, we may conclude that 'whom' should be replaced by 'who'.
Applying it, we are now left with Option B, C & E.

2. Parallel Construction : Since the word 'Unlike' is used (which is used for comparison), the phrase before and after should obey the principles of parallel construction. Let's check each of the left options:

Option B : the phrase before coma talks about 'the people who....' and the one after talks about 'the hope of the prosepectors...'. Clearly, the comparison is made between certain kind of hope and certain kind of people which are not comparable at all (the same way you cannot compare apple and oranges). This breaks the law of parallel construction. Hence incorrect.

Option C : Again 'that of the people' is not any person or set persons, while 'the prospectors...' is a set of people. This is not a correct comparison. Incorrect.

Option E : 'the people who...' and 'the prospectors...' both are sets of people, hence correct comparison following parallelism. Correct Answer.

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