哈佛成功申请文16HarvardSupplementEssay.docVIP

Harvard Supplement Essay Every year at Thanksgiving, my mother reads the same passage from Charlote’s Web, and every year it makes her cry. I am not predisposed to crying. However , the ending of Charlotte’s Web, with it simple declarative sentence describing “ the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.’ Conjures up more emotion in me than practically any other work of literature. It is inextricably linked with memories of childhood Thanksgivings, when my extended family, with its secular humanist bent, gave thanks through prose rather than through prayer. While Judaism holds some sway, Literature is the true religion of choice at my family functions. My relatives, a bunch of writers, lawyers, and psychoanalysts, are all creators or interpreters of words, so perhaps it was inevitable that I am captivated by language myself. Charlotte, E.B. White’s arachnid heroine, is fully aware of the power of words. She uses her web to proclaim Wilbur, “Some Pig,’’ and, miraculously, the previously unremarkable animal becomes just that. Similarly, she manages to make her friend “terrific,’’ “radiant,’’ and even “humble” through the words of her web. While the self-effacing Charlotte attributes the success of her ploy to man’s gullibility, claiming, “People believe almost anything they see in print,’’ there is clearly more at work than simple deception. When farmers from miles around gather to gawk at the seemingly phenomenal pig, they are no truly being fooled, for Wilbur successively takes on each of the attributes that are ascribed to him in the spider’s web. Life conforms to Charlotte’s writing. The consummate author, she uses her words to forge a new reality. She belongs to a tradition of creation through language that stretches back as far as the Book of Genesis, in which they entire universe is brought into existence through the utterance of words, or the New testament, where