50 Harvard Essays

“Entering a Shaded World” 
“Entering a Shaded World” 
-- by Ezra S. Tessler 
Bending my head to pass through the low doorway I blinked deliberately, allowing 
my eyes to adjust to the dim light of the cavernous room. Everything was a clouded 
dream, one that you are unable to disentangle as it spins through your unconscious, 
but which somehow begins to unravel and become clearer only after you have 
awakened. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness into which I had just entered, I 

---

Essays are for reference only. Do NOT copy or imitate anything! 
Plagiarism is severely punished! 
caught sight of the seated figure illuminated by the dim light. I was unable to tell if 
he was miles away in my world or inches away in a distant world. 
I approached the dark figure, knowing that his eyes had felt my presence but were 
occupied and could wait to meet my nearing figure with a familiar face. Then, he 
raised his head slowly from the drawing in his lap, his soft dark eyes focusing on 
mine as he gave a slight nod and a gentle smile, acknowledging me with a few 
muffled words in Spanish. I studied the face and noticed the subtle details. He was 
barely thirty, but his face was creased with lines of struggle, pressed into a clay 
mask by many hard years. His dark countenance transported me through time to a 
place where I stood in front of a noble Aztec leader. 
I had come to this land to experience a different culture, to learn a foreign language, 
and to encounter new people. I had arrived in his studio like a blank canvas: he had 
found it, stretched it, and prepared it for the transformation that would soon take 
place. With a gentle hand he had lifted his paintbrush from his palette, and 
passionately sweeping his brush across the canvas, he had created a new 
composition in me. He then carefully handed me the new painting, and with it, his 
palette and paintbrush, still holding the paint he had used. I left containing the 
shades of his world and holding the tools needed to face my world. 
His eyes shaded by memory., he had told me with humble pride the stories of his 
people. He had recounted his struggles his fighting in the revolution, and his combat 
in the countryside of Chiapas. He had described the oppression he and his family 
had suffered from the government, all with the gentle breeze of hope blowing 
through his words. 
He had looked at me one day as we both sat hunched over our sketchbooks, and 
whispered in his lingering Spanish a single thought: even if things did not change, 
even if his hope was not fulfilled, he still had something that no government could 
take away, something that was his own and would wither away only after he had 
breathed his last breath. His soul was his, and he wanted to share it through his 
artwork. 
My mind floated back into the cave, where it blinked, rubbed its eyes, and soared 
above the scene. The scene had two figures facing each other, inches away in place 
and time, but years away in experience, slowly connected inwardly as they 
proceeded in being amidst each other, joined by a connecting truth and by the soft 
light which threw its buoyant flicker over the two masses, distorting and twisting 
them into infinite and amorphous shapes wavering on the muted wall. 
ANALYSIS 
This is an example of how an essay doesn’t necessarily have to tell something about 
the author forthright. Although he succumbs occasionally to the use of clichés, 
Tessler is talented at writing, and he exhibits this talent unrestrained in a piece at 

---