Hello Everyone!
Let's take a look at this question, one problem at a time, and narrow it down to the right answer quickly! To begin, here is the original sentence, and we've highlighted the major differences between the options in orange:
Among the objects found in the excavated temple were small terra-cotta effigies left by supplicants who were either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aid in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help.
(A) in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help
(B) in healing physical and mental ills and to thank her for helping
(C) in healing physical and mental ills, and thanking her for helping
(D) to heal physical and mental ills or to thank her for such help
(E) to heal physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help
After taking a quick glance over the options, there are a few places we can focus on to narrow down our options:
1. in healing / to heal (Idioms)
2. and / or (Idioms)
3. thanking / to thank (Parallelism)
4. such help / helping (Parallelism)
Since a majority of this deals with Idioms & Parallelism, let's focus on that for now! If we look closely at the original sentence, we can spot the idiom we're dealing with:
Among the objects found in the excavated temple were small terra-cotta effigies left by supplicants who were either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aid in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help.
The idiom we need to work with is:
either X or Y
Let's focus just on the idiom structure for now. We'll deal with parallelism later. Here is how they break down:
(A) in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help --> either X or Y = OK
(B) in healing physical and mental ills and to thank her for helping --> either X and Y = WRONG
(C) in healing physical and mental ills, and thanking her for helping --> either X and Y = WRONG
(D) to heal physical and mental ills or to thank her for such help --> either X or Y = OK
(E) to heal physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help --> either X or Y = OK
We can eliminate options B & C because they don't use "either X or Y" correctly.
Now that we have it narrowed down to only 3 options, let's focus on parallelism. Remember that X and Y both need to be parallel in structure, wording, verb tense, and number. To make this easier, I'm going to add the first half of the idiom ("either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aide"). Here's how things break down when we focus on parallelism:
(A) either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aid in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help
(D) either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aid to heal physical and mental ills or to thank her for such help
(E) either asking the goddess Bona Dea's aid to heal physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help
We can eliminate option D because it doesn't use parallel structure in the idiom "either X or Y." This leaves us with only 2 options left, so let's focus on what's different about each one to determine which is the better option:
(A) aid in healing physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help
This is CORRECT! We're dealing with another idiom here. The proper way to say this is to "aid in verb-ing."
(E) aid to heal physical and mental ills or thanking her for such help
This is INCORRECT because the proper idiom is "aid in verb-ing," not "aid to verb."
There you go - option A was correct all along!
Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.
