Thomas Eakins' powerful style and his choices of

[jlucero]

You are missing the (very) important subject in your parallelism:

Thomas Eakins' powerful style and his choices of subject were as disturbing to his own time as they are compelling for ours.

The style and choices were as disturbing to his own time as they are compelling for ours.

They were as disturbing (then) as they are compelling (now).

They were as X as they are Y.

Notice the important addition of the word "they" in the second element to make a proper comparison between elements in different time periods. Take a look at these two examples:

They are as red as apples. (comparing one thing to another)
vs
They were as red then as they are now. (comparing two ideas in two different tenses)

[sachin.w]

had been as disturbing in his own time as they are

will this be correct?

Regards,
Sachin

[thanghnvn]

there are only 2 cases (on gmat sc) in which present perfect is used: an action which happens before and continues into the current time, and an action which happen in the past but whose effect exists at present.

is my thinking correct?

[jlucero]

had been as disturbing in his own time as they are

will this be correct?

Regards,
Sachin

Only if there's another past tense verb (or logical usage) in the sentence to justify using the past perfect "had". It's more likely that you would say:

It was (past) as disturbing then as it is (present) now.
or
It had been (past perfect) as disturbing then as it was (past) yesterday.

[jlucero]

there are only 2 cases (on gmat sc) in which present perfect is used: an action which happens before and continues into the current time, and an action which happen in the past but whose effect exists at present.

is my thinking correct?

That sounds right.

[Suapplle]

sorry to bump up the old thread
I have one more question about the problem.
can I write the sentence as following?

They were as disturbing to his own time as are compelling for us

It seems fine without "they",is that the second "as" must be followed by a complete clause when the tense is changed?
Ron,please help,thank you very much!

[RonPurewal]

In that kind of thing, you need to keep the subject after "as".

[manhhiep2509]

Hello.

I tried to explain the use of tenses in choice C, D, and E as below. Please take a look and see whether my explanation is correct.

C and E: "in his own time" indicates that something mentioned must happen only during the period of time, so the use of present perfect tense is not correct.
<I compared "in his own time" with timeframes starting with "for" or "since" to make the conclusion>

D: I kind of feel that the use of past perfect tense and past simple tense is incorrect because the sentence would indicate that Thomas Eakins' style no longer has effect in the current generations.
The problem is that I feel it is wrong but I cannot find any clue to confirm it.
So what makes we think that the style still has effect on the current generations?

Thank you.

[RonPurewal]

"Ours" = "our time" hasn't ended yet, so the past tense is inappropriate.

It's not any more complicated than that, so you may be imposing complexity that doesn't really exist.

[manhhiep2509]

Ron,

What about the comment made by sunny.jain that a subject (they) is needed after as ?

Could you please clarify that. Thank you.

since the tense changes - from "were" to "are" - you need a new clause. you can't just have a verb without a subject; hence the requirement of "they".

Hi Ron.

I find some correct sentences in GMAT that eliminate the subjects in the second part of a comparison structure. For example:

"My mom broke 4 cups, as many as are bought by my dad"

The below sentence does not have subject, and according to your explanation it is incorrect.
Please explain why the above is correct but the below isn't.

"the styles were as disturbing in his own time as are in our"

Thank you.

[RonPurewal]

You've still got "my dad" as the agent of the action. ("Are" in your example, on the other hand, is stranded.)

I suppose that "my dad" is not technically a grammatical subject here, but he's still the agent of the action. So, replace "subject" with "agent of the action, regardless of whether it's grammatically a subject" in the analysis above.

[JbhB682]

Hi Experts - for B : it seems like you have to have a "They" given there is a tense change in option B

Can I make the following take-away ?

-- If there is no tense change needed in the second half of the comparison -- you can eclipse BOTH the subject (in this case : "THEY") and the verb in the 2nd half of the comparison clause ?

-- If there is a verb tense change needed in the second half of the comparison - You have to have BOTH the subject and the verb

Example

i) X and Y were as thin last decade as last year.


In the above sentence -- per the intended meaning, both the clauses to be compared are in the past tense. Can I drop the subject and the verb in the second clause ?

vs.

ii) X and Y were as thin last decade as THEY ARE now

Per the intended meaning, the second half is not intended for the past tense but for the present tense -- hence you cannot eclipse the subject (In this case, "THEY" and the verb ("ARE") in the second clause in blue

[esledge]

Hi Experts - for B : it seems like you have to have a "They" given there is a tense change in option B

Can I make the following take-away ?

-- If there is no tense change needed in the second half of the comparison -- you can eclipse BOTH the subject (in this case : "THEY") and the verb in the 2nd half of the comparison clause ?

-- If there is a verb tense change needed in the second half of the comparison - You have to have BOTH the subject and the verb

I hesitate to say that the need to repeat words is ONLY because of the tense change; I think idiom may play a role here, too. For example, I think something is missing in the example below, but not necessarily a repeat of the subject an verb (as you correctly note, "X and Y were" works as a root phrase with both parallel elements). However, I'd add an "in the" to both elements to make them both idiomatic and parallel.

Example

i) X and Y were as thin last decade as last year.

Corrected: X and Y were as thin in the last decade as in the last year.

The alternative below is also pretty close to correct, but again I think "last decade" can't stand alone the way "last year" can, and would need an "in the" or "for the" to be a complete idiom.

ii) X and Y were as thin last decade as THEY ARE now

Correct: X and Y were as thin in the last decade as THEY ARE now.
Correct: X and Y have been as thin for the last decade as THEY ARE now.
Correct: X and Y were as thin last year as THEY ARE now.

Per the intended meaning, the second half is not intended for the past tense but for the present tense -- hence you cannot eclipse the subject (In this case, "THEY" and the verb ("ARE") in the second clause in blue

In these last examples, this seems like a correct assessment to me. For GMAT purposes, I tell my students to assess the exact words of each element on either side of the parallel marker. The main thing is that they must match--it's far less important whether there are "too many" words in the elements that could have technically been in the root phrase instead. In fact, the repetition can be good for both parallelism and clarity, as is the case with the repeat of the subject "X and Y" as "they" in this last set of examples.

[JbhB682]

Hi Experts - is option B in the active voice or passive voice ?

If option B is the active voice -- is the subject [style and his choices of subject] really "DOING" the disturbing ?

[esledge]

If option B is the active voice -- is the subject [style and his choices of subject] really "DOING" the disturbing ?

Choice B is active voice. You can have inanimate/insensate nouns as the subject of a sentence. This is actually pretty common.

The storm clouds rolled in ominously. (Well, really the wind blew the storm clouds into the area, but this is close enough.)
His words inspired all of us. (Actually, he inspired us with his words, but he said the words and "he" is not in this sentence, so this is close enough.)
The house stands high on a hill. (You could argue that people stood the house on a hill when they built it, but we can talk of the house as if it is now, actively standing.)