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[mankey]

Among the emotions on display in the negotiating room were anger for repeatedly raising the issue over and over again and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal.

(A) were anger for repeatedly raising the issue over and over again and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal
(B) was anger for repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles from ever beginning to heal
(C) were anger over repeatedly raising the issue and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles to begin healing
(D) was anger about the issue, which was raised over and over, and preventing the wounds from earlier battles, still raw, to begin healing
(E) were anger about the issue, which was raised repeatedly, and preventing the raw wounds from earlier battles to begin to heal

I think the answer should be B. Please provide OA.

Thanks
Mankey

[gunjan1208]

IMO B

[GmatKiss]

IMO: B

[Nidhi4mba]

B for me.

[Brian@VeritasPrep]

Really good example here of the 3/2 split methodology and of the way that the GMAT loves to lead sometimes with a modifier on a Subject-Verb agreement question to put some extra nouns in front of you.

Here "among" at the beginning is the predicate of the sentence, not the subject. The sentence is saying that anger (and perhaps other emotions) were among the full set of emotions on display, but it leads with "among the emotions" to put that plural noun "emotions" first to make this difficult.

But if you see that 3/2 split between "were" and "was" as the first words below in the answer choices, you know you're being forced to determine the subject of "were" or "was". We know that anger was one of the emotions...are there any others in the subject?

Because there aren't, "anger" is the subject ---> "anger was among the emotions on display..."

So we need to use "was". From there, D has a not-parallel/illogical use of "and" (anger...and preventing - preventing is neither parallel to anger nor an emotion to be "among the emotions"), so B is correct.

[robosc9]

From there, D has a not-parallel/illogical use of "and" (anger...and preventing - preventing is neither parallel to anger nor an emotion to be "among the emotions"), so B is correct.

Hi Brian,

Can you please explain the issue between B & D? I do not follow the explanation. Thanks!

[Brian@VeritasPrep]

Hey robosc9,

Yeah, good question and I apologize for a pretty lax explanation between those two. If you look specifically at D:

Among the emotions on display... (D) was anger about the issue, which was raised over and over, and preventing the wounds from earlier battles, still raw, to begin healing

Because the modifier "which was raised over and over" is a correct modifier for "issue", you can cut that part out (it's separated by commas, making it a nonessential modifier) and just read:

Among the emotions on display was anger and preventing...

Well, two major things are wrong there:

1) If we consider "preventing" an emotion, then it's a second emotion on display (paired with "anger") and "was" is therefore wrong (singular verb - if there are two, we need "were")

2) "Preventing" is not an emotion, so it's an illogical statement to begin with.