Now, you may ask for the context and how does the above metaphor fit into the narrative the author is trying to weave, think about it, you put tons of hours into an essay only for it to not appear as good as you initially envisioned and the dust starts clogging it and meshing its pious moor of paper with a thick layer of offal that renders it impossible to ever be perused or understood. The mighty writer, caught in a lapse, and in a state of tiredness, defers the pen to a stooge renowned throughout the field for its exemplary talent and ability to finish a duty as soon as it came to him.
For the sword that is handled by the king was once polished by a stooge in some lonely house, and this that hunt often ends up chasing his own shadow to the arms of a famished beast who waits unbounded by fear and impatience for the prey that the winds whispered to him about.
And the stooge gets down to work at the behest of the sacred decree of the emperor of the pen, he finishes it as soon as the orders arrive and deferentially presents to the king, to his glorious delight.
The king stands in awe of what the stooge just produced and rewards him handsomely for his effort, it’s a triumph par excellence and the custodian of the pen decides to exercise the essay and propagate its essence to the world beyond.
They say that inadequacy is the greatest provenance of chagrin, and the king as enthusiastic as he was, couldn’t really understand what was written in that mystical tome composed by the stooge; sure it looked elegant, and out of the world at certain points but the alien-ness of it all confounded the king beyond measure.
He was hunting for material he could understand but the sentences seemed to elude him; ostentation stared out the window at the emperor’s glowering face and substance drove down the chin and left him staring into the vacuous abyss of words.
Nonetheless, he tried to frame it in his own parlance and put it out there for the world to see, only to be met with confusion and derision from his own subjects who spent so many of their years revering him and considering him a paragon of wisdom.
His life tumbled on its head and the embarrassment he experienced was next to none, the noble penmanship of the stooge relegated to a sliver of discombobulation thanks to an abject lack of awareness.
And thus, the narrative the author succinctly mentioned in the opening stages has been provided a meaningful backdrop for the audience to understand.
For greater understand, the stooge can be equated to the Essay bot which is reputed to compose essays for the noble writer provided he gives it a fee and the concepts to address, it swiftly gets to work and produces an amalgam of information that is composed eloquently, almost at par with the best in the business.
A lot of people would see this as a lucrative expedient and a few others as a cheap way out of a situation whose entire essence is grounded on assessment of one’s analytical thinking and writing skills.
Regardless of the reader’s allegiance on the matter it is only right to commend technology for coming so far as to create a program that expedites something so daunting and renders it a seemingly facile task able to be completed in a span of minutes.
Maybe, this is an auguring of the inevitable doomsday of writers: a tragedy that was in the making since the moment computers started treaded on the realm of acumen reserved only for the most brilliant humans, it is not our place to dwell on those thoughts, but to understand how and why humans would entertain something that encroaches upon the mannerisms of their own kind, kindred in a sense, yet out of the park in all aspects.
Even a boon is like a blessing to the eye that can flint beyond the obtuse, and the blots in the silver lining evident to all those with a sensitive touch.
Thus, the essay bot remains a bone of contention; a bone which apparently supports the viscera of one’s maddening dreams of lexical accomplishment. However, once looked beyond what meets the eye, it turns into anything but a noble fruit of mankind’s technological advancement, rather a lifeless mould of nothingness that shed its skin to carry a pretence of helpfulness.
By: Pragyan Chakravarty
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