Parallelism with active and passive voice -Experts pls opine

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gmatrant: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 416; Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2007 9:08 amFollowed by: 1 member; Thanked: 10 times

by gmatrant » Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:53 pm

Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldierÂ´s pension, joined the Continental Army in 1782 at the age of 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become too ill to serve.

A. 22, was injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she had become
B. 22, was injured three times, while being discharged in 1783 because she had become
C. 22, and was injured three times, and discharged in 1783, being
D. 22, injured three times, and was discharged in 1783 because she was
E. 22, having been injured three times and discharged in 1783, being

The answer is A. Here I note that the first part is in active voice "joined the Continental Army" and the next two parallel parts are in passive voice "was injured" and "was discharged".
Can we have parallelism with active/passive voice? Are there any more examples of this kind in OG?

A kudos or thanks would do great if my answer has helped you

Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Sun Jan 08, 2012 11:53 pm

avik.ch: Legendary Member; Posts: 641; Joined: Wed Apr 20, 2011 1:15 amFollowed by: 32 members; Thanked: 149 times; GMAT Score:760

by avik.ch » Mon Jan 09, 2012 1:08 am

gmatrant wrote:

Here I note that the first part is in active voice "joined the Continental Army" and the next two parallel parts are in passive voice "was injured" and "was discharged".
Can we have parallelism with active/passive voice? Are there any more examples of this kind in OG?

Well I am not an expert !!

Active and passive voice is a meaning issue and depends on what the writer wants to convey.

If you want to stress on the doer of the action then use active.

If you want to stress on the action itself then use passive/or if we dont know who the doer of the action. In passive voice the original subject is the object of a prepositional phrase which acts as an adverb ( verb modifier).

The work is done by me. "me" is the doer of the action or the original subject, which is now the object of a preposition in the prepositional phrase " by me" - so you delete the "by phrase".

The work is done - since passive is written to stress on the action itself, we generally delete the adverb.

In this case : Deborah Sampson was injured by X and was discharged by X.... she cannot do this by itself. This action was done by someone else.

I dont know much about parallelism but I think that parallelism is neither a grammatical concept nor a meaning concept. Its a stylistic issue - a rhetorical device. So we should choose the one that imparts proper meaning and maintain the essence of the sentence.

Hope this helps !!

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