As a graduate for the year of 2024, for my senior capstone project I developed a website that is purposed around a question-and-answer, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot for Science Leadership Academy (SLA), Center City specific questions. This project was developed to be an informational hub for SLA specific answers, so that students, whether they are current SLA students or upcoming students, are able to find quick answers for any questions they have. Although the database is not as broadscale as it was supposed to be, as in the fact that it doesn’t know about every teacher nor does it know about every current event, it knows about a few teachers, serving as the start of something that could be further improved by anyone who wants to pursue the capstone in the future. And if no one wants to pursue it, that’s completely fine! Since the reason for its proposition was to lessen the fear mongering brought forward due to AI advancements, and show the good things AI can do under the right intentions and hands.

And , if someone does end up trying to further improve it, I hope this paragraph will help you. The languages I needed a basic understanding of are Python, Javascript, CSS, and HTML, which I already knew a bit about. Resources to learn include: W3schools, YouTube, and Codecademy. The AI, the python code, is the backend – cannot be seen – of the website, while the HTML, CSS, and Javascript are the frontend of the website – can be seen. For the AI, look into FAISS, Hugging Face, and Langchain. For hosting the website, look into Vercel, and for hosting the Python app, look into Pythonanywhere, Heroku, or Render. That’s it, good luck!

Website (AI may or may not be down atm): https://slagpt.vercel.app/

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IpLb-_myW_AXVRYiibjFVCnllIKxPdHkntVrypc4mGU/edit?usp=sharing

Throughout the story, the author Ken Kessy, through Bromden’s extraordinary detailed narrative descriptions, emphasizes the communicative power of the character McMurphy. For instance, the identity of McMurphy’s speech is presented and analyzed under absolute and aggressive values. By doing so, it’s clear that with the way he’s communicating, he’s able to describe his ideas so fundamentally that his ideology is portrayed clearly for anyone that wishes to understand and follow him. Saying something bizarre in the beginning, almost comically, then changing the dynamic swiftly into a moment of explanation, guiding the reader to view him positively. This way of expressing himself expands further from McMurphy himself, and onto the political leaders of today.

First, it is important to identify the sections of the story that emphasize this type of communication by McMurphy. One such section, a memorable one at that, occurs during McMurphy and Harding’s feud between their views of the Big Nurse, happening after the group therapy ‘pecking party.’ (51) on Chapter 5 where McMurphy would describe the Big Nurse as a ‘ball-cutter.’ (53) This was an incredibly odd response, puzzling both the readers and Harding. It seemed to be irrelevant to the argument at hand, but then McMurphy would go on to explain it: “…people who try to make you weak… And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin’ you where it hurts the worst.” (54) This explanation transitions that irrelevancy to relevance, allowing the readers, me included, to view the original bizarre statement as a comical solution to Harding’s inability to express how he really felt about the Big Nurse. And, considering that this is a ward with a majority, if not primarily, men, it makes his message that much clearer to the people of the ward.

Furthermore, by Chapter 6, as McMurphy’s character becomes more known to the narrator Bromden, Bromden would then characterize McMurphy to a ‘bull’ when it comes to his unwillingness to succumb to the Big Nurses measures of control, especially with the idea of fog: “(They haven’t really fogged the place full force all day today, not since McMurphy came in. I bet he’d yell like a bull if they fogged it.)” (69) This bull-like way of confronting problems, never falling back on his words, makes characters like Cheswick fall head over heels for him. Following his every idea whether it be to use the space of the therapeutic discussion area for a different purpose or to add baseball to the TV channel. And, it’s not only Cheswick, his clear following would be clear during the voting results of whether or not the ward should add baseball to the TV channel.

During Chapter 15, McMurphy was able to bring over twenty votes out of forty patients to plead his case of baseball. And, apparently, there happened to be a rule stating that to change a ward policy, you need a majority vote. Since, it wasn’t necessarily a majority, but a half and half, it would be Bromden who would go on to shift the scale in McMurphy’s favor. At first, Bromden was convinced that McMurphy made him raise his hand for a vote forcefully, but soon, he would push aside that thought, claiming the following: “No. That’s not the truth. I lifted it myself.” (123) With all that being said, even though McMurphy expresses his thoughts in a, at first glance, seemingly provocative and negative way, he is still able to bring so many people together, and to his side, much like our politicians today.

A primary example of such a politician is Donald Trump, our 45th president. Our 45th president has an extensive list of quotes that are outrageous, but it’s also true to mention that these quotes may have raised awareness for the individuals included in such outrageous claims. For instance, when it comes to instances of racism, he said the following on a telephone interview with Fox and Friends: “…I am the least racist,…” [1] Sure, he may be the least racist, racist person. Since when it comes to racism nowadays, those who hide their intentions through a false mask. Those who hide their racism through innocence and act as if they are not what they are, are in fact more racist. In addition to that, when it comes to the issue of the border, and trying to ‘build a wall,’ it provided awareness for people who were illegal immigrants. I managed to hear a lot of stories during the event of such a controversial message. So, when it comes to Trump’s relation with McMurphy, they’re both very strict in their messages, talking with absolute and aggressive terms. One more agreeable than the other, of course, but they are able to garner support through such provocative language.

However, there is a reason all of this works so well. People use such provocative language to set a trap. It’s to get a reaction they know you’ll have, and then they take you on a journey to tell you that the reaction you had was wrong, and you should have a different reaction. That’s how I felt as I read the whole book. I originally thought that McMurphy would come out as an enormously unagreeable character who had nothing but evil in his every action, but that was not true. And, it was also true that I fell in the trap of thinking that, so that once that was not true, my immediate reaction was to view him positively. So, in that regard, by reading this book, although it may be a bit overthinking on my part, I’ve learned to be more aware of those intentions, especially when it comes to putting my hands into future political atmosphere’s as I come of age.

[1] - Gass, Nick. “The 15 Most Offensive Things That Have Come out of Trump’s Mouth.” POLITICO, POLITICO, 9 Dec. 2015, www.politico.eu/article/15-most-offensive-things-trump-campaign-feminism-migration-racism/.

Throughout the book The Handmaid’s Tale, we see the author Margaret Atwood emphasize the decay of words when it comes to describing censorship within the tyrannical rule and dystopian setting of the book. This intent shown through Atwood’s writing helps the reader understand how words affect the concept of freedom for an individual or a society as a whole. In the following paragraph, these moments will be decrypted and magnified. We’ll also see later on that this case of censorship is not just special to The Handmaid’s Tale.

During the beginning chapters, the narrator Offred voices this standard of living: “Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.” (Chp 2, pg 8). This happens as the narrator describes her surroundings, as she refuses to explain why things are laid out the way they are. From this quote alone, it can be inferred that thinking outside the given outline provided by the current society is forbidden. And thus, if the narrator puts any meaning to the things around her, she has failed the spiritual values imposed on her. The things that happen around her are a matter of fact. The people in power allowed it. That’s all that can be thought of it.

Jumping off of that, there are moments where the narrator does think. A thought of the times before. One such example of a thought of the times before is during a specific section of the reading where the narrator reminisces about a love song. After it, she would say the following: “I don’t know if the words are right. I can’t remember. Such songs are not sung anymore in public, especially the ones that use words like free. They are considered too dangerous. They belong to outlawed sects.” (Chp 10, pg 54). Here, it’s important to mention that a song is a body of words. With this understanding, we can simplify this quote as saying that these bodies of words are considered too dangerous. Furthermore, it can also be inferred that these bodies of words (love songs) aren’t dangerous in the sense that they are a threat to human safety, but rather that they are a threat to the religious ideologies, or thinking practices, held by the tyrannical rule in place. To add onto the banning of songs, we can also look into the burning of magazines, an action very similar to a specific country in the past: “They must have poured gasoline, because the flames shot high, and then they began dumping the magazines, from boxes, not too many at a time” (Chp 7, pg 38). And so, all this has nothing to do with preventing human detriment, but all to do with preventing thinking that goes against a belief.

Among all that, Offred, later on, acknowledges that those higher in the hierarchy, in this context, the commander, has the word: “He has something we don’t have, he has the word.” (Chp 15, pg 88). From this quote, the reader may oftentimes be misled into thinking that the word simply means power, but it has a double meaning. Not only does it mean power, but it literally means what it means – word. The commanders, who’s higher in the hierarchy than the narrator, not only have more power, but the ability to think on a larger scale. Not intellectually, rather among the rules that the narrator has to follow, the commander will have less in total, but also have the ability to know beyond the narrator’s current understanding of the setting. Previously mentioned, the narrator refuses to give meaning to her surroundings. In reference to the commander, he’s able to describe the reasonings; meanings. However, he’s not the one who gets to place those meanings, he only gets to describe. This is largely because the author implies that there is a higher power, higher to that of the commander – possibly Angels, Eyes, etc – which I’m unable to fully describe as of now.

Now, why are these scenarios not just special to The Handmaid’s Tale? This is because it has real world connotations. For example the previously mentioned concepts in the historical context of the real world can be found in the following: Nazi Germany[1], the North Korean Government[2], and the Chinese Government[3]. Nazi Germany, as we know, examined the flow of words by controlling the press, whether it be newspapers, radios, or newsreels. Previously I mentioned the burning of magazines, but I never clarified what country took a similar action. It is undoubtedly Nazi Germany. They burned books they consider to be un-German – Jewish authors and non-Jewish authors that conflict with Nazi ideals similar to Gilead. Furthermore, they banned Germans from listening to radio’s foreign to their own. The list goes on for Nazi Germany, so what about the North Korean government and the Chinese government? They are about the same. North Korea is stricter than China, of course, but both oversee the media and dispose of media that go against their beliefs. From personal knowledge, China, instead of Youtube, has other platforms to share only ITS content. So, from these three real-life sources, it’s easy to acknowledge that communication, which relies heavily on words, of multiple perspectives are condemned by the highest group that places the meanings – the governments.

And what do people do when it is condemned, with no possibility for expression? Much like the narrator, they get used to it. They forbiddenly make sense of it: “But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.” (Chp 2, pg 8). For an individual under these pretenses, they’ll stop thinking and begin to wander as if they are nothing but corpses. And, as humans do, they’ll find a way to justify their sense of living through the words of its controller.

“For survival may be, freedom (words) is (are) unseen (unsaid).” — They say.

Sources:

[1] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda-and-censorship

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-16255126

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/business/china-censored-search-engine.html

Mi familia es un grupo de personas similares. En mi familia, tengo dos hermanos mayores. También, tengo muchos tíos, tías, y primos de Bangladesh y aquí. En mi casa, yo vivo con mi madre, padre, y dos hermanos mayores.

Mi hermano mayor, Minhaj, es algo diferente, pero también similar. Él tiene el pelo negro, liso, y corto. Él tiene los ojos marrones oscuros. La diferencia es que él es muy alto y algo delgado. También, él es algo trabajador y profesional, pero es increíblemente simpático y sabio. Él no es ni antipático ni ordenado.

Mi madre, Shamima, es un poco diferente y similar. Por ejemplo, ella tiene el pelo negro, ondulado, y largo. Ella tiene los ojos marrones oscuros. La diferencia es que ella es bien baja y algo gordita. Ella es más o menos inteligente y responsable, pero es súper ordenada y sincera. Ella no es ni tímida ni callada.

Me llamo Mohammed Riaz. Tengo el pelo negro, liso, y corto. Tengo los ojos marrones oscuros. También, soy algo alto y un poco gordito. Soy un poco callado y estudioso, pero bastante desordenado y tímido. Yo no soy ni deportista ni mentiroso.

Yo y mi hermano mayor, Minhaj, somos algo comparables. Tenemos el pelo negro, liso, y corto. También, tenemos los ojos marrones oscuros. Nosotros somos trabajadores y sinceros. Nosotros no somos ni ordenados ni irrespetuosos.También, nosotros somos Bangladeshi.