50 Harvard Essays

Essays are for reference only. Do NOT copy or imitate anything! 
Plagiarism is severely punished! 
reader to move through the essay with puzzling questions about the salade’s origins 
and the reader’s unfamiliarity with such a dish, motivating the reader to remain 
engrossed in the work and seek out the answers of interest. Only in the end are 
things revealed, and even then the reader may not be fully satisfied. 
Despite the essay’s great descriptive power, however, the reader is given few 
specific details about the author or the Unkrainian culture that serves as the 
backdrop for the author’s childhood. Including more such details could dramatically 
increase the essay’s strength, especially given the unfamiliarity of most readers 
with the culture that stands at the core of the author’s heritage. 
“The Tug of War” 
“The Tug of War” 
I stand between two men. The caramel-skinned man on my left holds his cane as if 
the world is waiting for his entrance. On my right the taller vanilla-skinned man 
stands erect as if he must carry the world. Each man reaches for my hand and 
before long, a tug-of-war ensues between them. Each tries to pull me over the line 
of agreement but my body stays in the middle. During this struggle I hear their 
voices saying: 
“Cast down your bucket where you are!” 
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line!” 
“It is at the bottom we must begin, not at the top!” 
“The only way we can fully be men is with the acquisition of social equality and 
higher education!” 
Their voices blur. My torso stretches wider and wider. My arms grow in length as 
each man pulls and pulls. Finally, I yell, “I can’t take it anymore!” 
This is the scene that plays in my head when I contemplate the philosophies of 
Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, two foes attempting to answer a 
question that never seems to go away: “How shall the African-American race be 
uplifted?” their answers represented the right and lift of the social spectrum in the 
early 1900s. I attempted to present their views in the IB Extended Essay. While I 
wrote the paper something inside of me felt the need to agree with and choose one 
philosophy over the other. I couldn’t. So this struggle developed. 
In the beginning, Washington looked as if he had already lost the tug-of-war. When 
I first encountered the ideas of Washington I wanted to grab him and ask him, 
“What was going through your head?” The former-slave-turned-leader-of-a-race, 
Washington advocated industrial education over higher education, When he said, 
“cast down your bucket,” he meant relinquishing social equality in the name of 
economic prosperity. When I read this, one word popped into my mind, “Uncle Tom.” 
I felt that Washington had betrayed his race when he renounced social equality. 
Wasn’t that a right every man wanted? 
After examining Washington, examining Du Bois was like jumping into a hot bath 

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