By confronting a devastated economy through actions such as creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, opening the Securities and Exchange Commission, suspending the gold standard, launching massive public works programs, and improving the morale of a demoralized nation through his fireside chats, First Inaugural address, and other motivational speeches, Franklin Roosevelt both lifted the spirits of Americans across the country and set the United States on a course that helped propel it out of the Great Depression.
A) launching massive public works programs, and improving the morale of a demoralized nation through his fireside chats
B) and launching massive public works programs, and improving the morale of a demoralized nation through his fireside chats
C) and launching massive public works programs, and by improving the morale of a nation demoralized through his fireside chats
D) and through the launch of massive public works programs, and by improving the morale of a demoralized nation through his fireside chats
E) and launching massive public works programs, and by improving the morale of a demoralized nation through his fireside chats


My answer was A, while the correct answer is E. The explanation goes as folows-
Franklin Roosevelt did two things to set the United States on a course to propel itself out of the depression: (1) confronting a devastated economy (2) improving the morale of the demoralized country. Both these two actions and the list of steps taken to accomplish them need to be parallel. Since the first action (followed with its list of steps) is introduced with by the second action (followed with its list of steps) should also be introduced with by.

My doubt is- why can't i consider that roosevelt did 4 seperate actions to confront the bad economy? how do i understand from a statement that has been parallelly constructed, like in the above case, that roosevelt has done 2 completely different actions ( 1 and 2)?

Hi Siddarth ,
If you carefully observe those two actions both have parallel structure like – ‘by doing X through A,B,C..’ Now to accept your argument this would have been possible if the 2nd action was part of the first action by not having anything after ''…...nation'' . But as the 2nd action also has the structure 'by doing X through A,B,C ' ,this should be in parallel as a separate action ,added by a conjunction and . Once you understand this the rest is easy why the other ‘and’ is there in the first action - just to end the list.
Hope this will clarify.

Thanks ,
PM

prana is correct! Let's look at the basic structure here:

By confronting a devastated economy through actions such as
1) creating . . . . ,
2) opening . . . . ,
3) suspending . . . , and
4) launching . . . ,
AND
by improving the morale . . . . ,
Franklin Roosevelet . . . . .

Roosevelt did two main good things: 1) confronting the economy (and did four things within this area) and 2) improving the morale. You're absolutely right that he did do four separate things to improve the economy, and at the same time he also improved morale.

This one is tricky. If you notice that the sentence starts with "by", and that you have a split in the answer choices with some containing another "by" and some without, you can ask yourself if Roosevelt helped the nation "by" doing two main activities, one of which has four sub-activities. Hope this helps!

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor