active passuive //sm (expert reply)

arghya05 wrote:Dressed as a man and using the name Robert Shurtleff, Deborah Sampson, the first woman to draw a soldier´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


acitve vz passive //sm is allowed in gmat.

Yes, active verbs can be parallel to passive verbs on the GMAT, absolutely, as you see here; in fact, there's no other answer choice here that would be parallel at all otherwise. The difference between "injured" and "was injured" is one of meaning. Deborah Sampson did not injure anybody in this sentence, she WAS injured, so if she's the subject (and she is, in the non-underlined portion), the verb MUST be passive to make sense.

Passive verbs are only wrong when they are replaced by an active construction that preserves the sentence's intended meaning and no other errors in the sentence are made. Never use this as your first rule for elimination; it is only when you are down to 2 choices that are only different because of active vs. passive that you should even notice whether a verb is passive.