Birth Day Party twins - Kaplan SC Question

[goelmohit2002]

Hi All,

In the below question, the original answer is "B". Can somebody please help me understand how this sentence is complete ?

"reluctant to finish".....but what ????

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At their birth day party, the twins were eager to bigin opening their presents, but finishing was hard for them

A) finishing was hard for them
B) reluctant to finish
C) finishing them reluctant
D) were reluctant after finishing
E) their finishing reluctant

Thanks
Mohit

[pakaskwa]

It's a parallel construction:
...twins were eager to begin, but reluctant to finish.

I don't know what they are reluctant about, but B is the only option here to make it parallel.

[goelmohit2002]

But IMO the sentence is not complete at all....and IMO the first thing that GMAT wants is the clarity of the sentence....and all the rules of grammar come after that. Here probably I am missing something due to which I am not able to understand what actually sentence wants to convey. Can somebody please help me in that.

What is the problem with "D"....it atleast is making some sense...probably they were reluctant to open the gifts after the party got finished.

can somebody please tell....does this type of sentence comes in actual GMAT....?

Thanks
Mohit

[shkusira]

Mohit it is not really as complicated as you think.

A matter of parallelism..Now they were eager to begin opening their presents but were reluctant to finish [opening their presents]. The last bit is kind of implied. After 'but' you have to have a word opposite 'eager' to obey the rules of parallelism. D is not correct because 'were reluctant after finishing' means nothing. How can they be reluctant about finishing to open their presents once they are finished? So they were NOT reluctant after finishing, but 'reluctant to finish' [opening their presents]

Hope I have at least tried to make it clear?

[goelmohit2002]

Yes, got it. Thanks.