"- [] And as long as you listen to what your heart tells you, you will have only what the white man gives you and nothing more. She was preparing him to take care of himself in case she had to go away like his father did. From a larger, more global viewpoint, these motions support and underscore Jamess own transformation. Whereas the minister clings to the traditional religious value of faith, the student espouses the development of more individualistic values based on reasoning and logic. Understanding The Sky is Gray requires that one not only understand something about the Louisiana of the 1930s and 1940s but also understand what was happening with regard to race in the United States during the 1960s, because the events of what later came to be called the Civil Rights era made a substantial and lasting impression on Gaines, one that can be seen not too far beneath the surface of The Sky is Gray in the person of the student and in the storys preoccupation with racial inequality. Set in Louisiana, Octavia is forced to raise her family by herself when her husband is sent off to war. Critical Overview The story occurs on a cold winter day in Louisiana, whose gray sky suggests the lack of hope for many African Americans. That though there are grave issues of race and class and poverty that Gaines used an "innocent"black child and an old white woman to bring hope and lovea very touching, emotional and humbling story. James, in The Sky is Gray, is a somewhat older black youth who rightly faces a more complex dilemma concerning his ear and eye. Plot Summary I've got a real bad feeling. In their introduction to Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: Conversations on the Writers Craft they write: Gainess characters evoke laughter, joy, despair, grief, anger, sympathy, andperhaps most of allpride. The Sky is Gray. As they wait, his mother thinks about homeabout his aunt, the other children, the farm animals and the weatherthe narrative follows Jamess thoughts back to the origins of his toothache. James is on the cusp between youth and adolescence, trying to understand what is expected of him by his inscrutable mother as he enters this next phase of his life. 01 Mar 2023 12:32:41 Only now, in the narrative present, as an almost eight year-old boy, can James understand why she forced him to do this. Critical Reflections on the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines, Athens: Georgia University Press, 1994. By forcing James to sublimate his emotions and accept them as signs of human weakness, she fails to provide him with a means of dealing with the emotional responses of others in a way consistent with her philosophy. The action in "The Sky is Gray" is broken up into thirteen short sections which describe a half day or so in the life of James, an eight-year-old black boy in the rural South of the late 1930s. His father, were told, is dead, and his mother is in a charity ward with a serious illness. You a man. While this is the nature of Octavias world, it does not completely define the contours of the world with which James must come to terms. Octavia overcomes the hardships of segregation and poverty while doing so. Gaines is best-known for his novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, published in 1971 and adapted into a television movie starring Cicely Tyson in 1974. Of course, the reader doesnt follow James all the way from childhood into adulthood, but the central premise of bildungsroman is that the reader watches the protagonist go from innocence to experiencein this case, from being a child whose primary interest is in staying warm and well-fed to a youth who has the first glimmerings of pride in himself and awareness of an important and external reality: that others will judge him not by what he is, but by how he appears to be. allivarnell13. Here, the key episode occurs between the liberal black student and the conservative black preachera paradoxical conflict between Word and word, between faith and sight. The sky is gray. From henceforth, Jamess own long day will be comprised of this struggle between black blood and white blood within a cerebral sky of graya terrifying and chilling confrontation with ones own senses and sensibilities. Further Reading You have these kids, you know: Ill stick a goddamned needle in my arm, Ill sniff coke, to hell with anybody telling me what to do. Shortly thereafter the nurse enters the room and announces that the doctor will not treat anyone until one oclock. Powerfully told with a convincing use of African-American dialect and dialogue, the story features nine-year-old James and the lessons he learns from his mother, Octavia, and others. "The Sky is Gray"contains many of the themes and images Gaines returns to again and again in his work: themes of personal responsibility, grace under pressure, and moral behavior; images of strong mothers, mysteriously absent fathers, and families in which love is expressed more often in harsh words or silence than in overt praise or affection. Babb cant decide. Helena tries to give them a larger piece, but Jamess mother insists on an accurate measure. . (18421910) All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. -1 Likes, 13 Comments - Stephanie Wise (@girlversusdough) on Instagram: "It's literally pouring rain today on top of the 3+ feet of snow we had piled up and the sky is gray" The Sky is Gray is told entirely from the point of view of the eight-year old narrator, James. "The Sky is Gray" refers to the literal winter scene in which the story takes place. Though he would no doubt take issue with the South being described as a singular place and would certainly argue that it is many places, each different, each having unique gifts of nature and people, each facing unique challenges, he would just as surely agree with W. E. B. This is neither a subjective nor an unimportant question. It suggests at first the bleak mood of the story but also hints at hope in the future. In both cases, the situation is presented as a puzzle to the young who must attempt to resolve the conflicts that come about as a result of this realization. Just as the clouds clear after a storm, James finds out on his trip to Bayonne that the stormy clouds that are his life are parting to let some sunshine through. Set during the 1940s, "The Sky is Gray" is narrated by James, an eight-year-old boy with a horrible toothache; the story focuses on the cold winter's journey he and his mother Octavia make to see the dentist in town. Gaudet, Marcia G. Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: a Conversation on the Writers Craft, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. The Sky is Gray is episodic in formthat is, the story is not told as a sequence of events, but as a sequence of events punctuated by narrative flashbacks and broken up into numbered segments. In one instance Octavia enters a white-owned hardware store and pretends to inspect ax handles for purchase while James heats himself at the wood stove. Jamess thoughts then turn to the memory of two redbirds he and his brother, Ty, had trapped, and to his mothers inexplicable insistence that he kill them and her equally inexplicable fury when he couldnt. Bloodline, his collection of short stories published in 1968, is a work that includes some of his best known short fiction, "The Sky Is Gray," "Just Like a Tree," and "A Long Day in November" (also published as a children's book in 1971). For example, in Ernest Gaines Valerie Babb writes: Unable to buy food because of their poverty, and forbidden to enter the warm shelters in the area of the dentists office because of their color, they become rambling outcasts in a society in which the whim of any white is empowered to affect their destiny. In these stories, black folk culture, with its emphasis on community-defined values and behaviors, shows signs of deterioration, while Western individualism and the development of more personally-defined values appear as catalysts in the demise of the black folk world view. BIBLIOGRAPHY Babb seems to approach this realization when she writes that Octavias dissembling enables her to warm him without compromising her dignity by begging. Babb realizes that Octavias act is fundamentally about dignity, not about warmth, but she doesnt think through the implications of the point she has made, here or later. Lowe, John., editor. There he developed a keen interest in reading, and he wrote his first novel the next year; on news of its rejection, he destroyed the only manuscript copy he possessed. Gates, Henry L, and Nellie Y. McKay. 3, Fall, 1984, pp. Awesome bookit wraps within the narrative so many layers of the black's struggle in America, their historymakes the reader think and feel for the characters, as such engaged with their livesgave me goosebumps!! But this state of affairs does not lasthis Auntie soon discovers that his tooth is rotten. Consequently, his feelings of isolation cause him to alienate himself from the emotional support and comfort of the members of his community, whom he, in turn, deprives of the benefits of his education. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. . In 1968, the same year that Gainess Bloodline was published, Reverend Martin Luther King himself was assassinated in a Memphis hotel. Because James is suffering a toothache, symbolic of the festering wounds of racism, he and his mother take the bus into Bayonne to see a dentist. . Overall, however, the move away from colonial entanglements was stronger than the ties that bound African countries to their colonial powers, and the move toward home rule was unstoppable. And by the end of the story, the reader does indeed sense that there has been some change to who James is in that short span, a sense reinforced by his mothers assertion that he is not a bum, but a man. The Sky Is Gray Photos View All Photos Movie Info. The first strong character trait James possesses is that he . Through his action, he admits that the emotional or heart position leads to a cul de sac; it cannot be defended rationally. The Sky Is Gray. In American Short Stories. Critical Overview On one hand, Alnest is little more than an offstage voice, the voice of an old man cautioning Helena, his wife, against the cold. Historical Context The reader only sees a small part of this process, a few hours one morning, a few more that afternoon, but these hours are important: they form some of the bedrock upon which the foundation of Jamess manhoodhis sense of personal dignity and worth, as well as courage and silence in difficultywill be built. It is my belief that Gaines' "The Sky is Gray" depicts the possible roots of a public leader, in the way the nature of the young narrator James is portrayed it illuminates the character traits in civil leader. have chosen to tell the story from a number of different perspectives. Such readings all share a serious, albeit unintentional, flaw; they suggest that one must understand all actions and most events as direct or indirect consequences of race, rather than individual choice. Ernest J. Gaines was born on River Lake Plantation in Oscar, a hamlet of Pointe Coupee Parish in rural Louisiana. Sora Ga Haiiro Dakara summary: A collection of short stories. The story begins with James and his mother waiting, on a painfully cold morning, for the arrival of a bus which will take them to nearby Bayonne. Analysis: "The Sky Is Gray". With Olivia Cole, James Bond III, Margaret Avery, Cleavon Little. The bus arrives and, while his mother pays, James moves to the back of the bus, where the blacks are made to sit. Ed. Though her presence in The Sky is Gray is minimal, Augustines presence in Gainess life can hardly be overstated: Unless you include her, he says, you cant write about me at all.. It is because of his absence that Octavias moral teachings are both so important and so urgently imparted. After a long walk, they finally arrive at the dentists office, which is already full of people waiting to be treated. With his degree in hand, Gaines won the Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship for Graduate Work which allowed him to begin work in Stanfords Creative Writing program, the first of many fellowships he has received. During the exchange between the men, the minister exposes the weakness of his position when he becomes frustrated and strikes the student. Words, he says, mean nothing. Young James (8 years old) mind is weighted down with guilt knowing his tooth has a big effect on the familythey might not be able to feed the family because of his tooth. (WMG owns this not me)(Lyrics)All the leaves are brown and the sky is greyI've been for a walk on a winters dayI'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.Californi. Criticism She uses her new awareness to structure her world into clear-cut oppositional units. However, for the moment, James is literally and figuratively caught in the middle of a storm in which both social and personal forces threaten his well-being. A poor African American boy and his mother experience both discrimination and kindness during a trip to town to see the dentist. This time the trial is so severe that the verbal command is ineffectual: Mama tells me keep my eyes in front where they belong, but I cant helpfrom seeing (italics mine). . The only way that James can truly understand his world is by authoritarian explanationthe tongue and ear forming the eye: Auntie and Monsieur Bayonne talked to me and made me see (italics mine). It is both more reasonable and more in keeping with Gainess own views on the importance of dignity to read Octavia as intentionally withholding warmth from James to teach him that the value of their personal dignity is greater than the value of the most basic comfortsbeing warm and well-fed. The Sky is Gray by Ernest J Gaines; Learning in Focus, inc. The Sky is Gray is a heartbreaking story of James and his Mama. The Sky Is Gray watch online free. What this suggests is that in the highly polarized world in which James is growing up, external appearance can be more significant that internal realityafter all, whether Jamess collar is up or down, hes clearly not a bum, but a boy, and even a man can be permitted, under conditions as cold as those James and Octavia find themselves in, to pull his collar up around his throat. They briefly duck into a hardware store to warm up, but must soon leave. In these stories, black folk culture, with its emphasis on community-defined values and behaviors, shows signs of deterioration, while Western individualism and the development of more personally-defined values appear as catalysts in the demise of the black . As the argument between the student and minister in the dentists office clearly illustrates, there is a racial dimension present in the story. This poor, Negro boy, James, lives with his mother and five other relatives while his father is away. Gaines, Ernest J. Dollar and a half to have it pulled. But assume for a moment that Octavias world is not so simple. For Babb, Octavias intention is to teach her son a valuable lesson in pride and survival, but she doesnt interrogate the relationship between pride and survival, preferring tacitly to assume that her readers will infer a necessary relationship between the two where none in fact exists. Though he can accurately recall the words of the student in the dentists office that lead up to the student being hit by the preacher, he cannot understand the argument in which they are engaged (She just looks at him like she dont know what hes talking bout. The best-known version is by the Mamas & the Papas, who sang backup on the original version and released it as a single in 1965.The lyrics express the narrator's longing for the warmth of Los Angeles during a cold winter in New York City. Sets found in the same folder "If The Sky is Gray" by Ernest Gaines. It made me tear up mutiple times and shook me out of the comfort of privileges. Publication date 1979 Topics Feature films, Feature films, Short Stories., Blacks. The Individual and the Community in Two Short Stories by Ernest J. Gaines, in Black American Literature Forum, Vol. This story, which initially appeared in Ernest J. Gainess collection entitled Bloodlines, has become a classic contemporary bildungsoman. Ernest J. Gaines is best known for his third novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), which recounts her latter-day observations of living in a racially torn Louisiana through the century between the War between the States and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The first thing that James learns is to rein in his potential visualityto accept verbal blinders for his eyes: Mama tells me to keep my eyes in front where they belong (italics mine). He is the oldest of all the children. In this case, consciousness raising of blacks should not lead to an alienation from the community as it has for the student and Octavia; it should provide the basis for bettering the community. In physical terms, there is motion from one pole to its opposite: from warm, to cold, to warm again; from beyond the outskirts of Bayonne to the city and back again; from the doctors office to the street, and to the office again, and so on. Because James is suffering a toothache, symbolic of the festering wounds of racism, he and his mother take the bus into Bayonne to see a dentist. Due to the several barriers James and his mother, Octavia, encounter trying to get to the dentist, the theme of . RT @BuddhistCeo: Morning meditation The first day of Spring I look from the zendo window Hoping the world has changed Alas no There is frost on the ground And the sky is gray As I sit zazen I dream of summer flowers The bell rings I smile I bow #thebuddistceo #buddhism #poetry #meditation . She loves her children, but more important to her than any visible demonstrations of affection are the moral lessons she insists upon teaching James. table<br>We make dumplings from a thin but durable dough so that it . James does not betray the kind and heartfelt offer of the couple although his mother would want him to. . Are the two related? The conflict in these two stories further illustrates the importance of the changes taking place within Southern black culture to the development of the social consciousness of children. The Sky is Gray. Author Biography When aspirin fails to work, Auntie wants to tell Jamess mother; James convinces her not to, so they turn instead to a neighbor, Monsieur Bayonne, for a prayer cure. The title of the piece hints to the general dreariness which lingers throughout the story. 28 terms. The title of the story "The Sky is Gray" by Ernest Gaines is ironic. The reader is made aware that the act of having the tooth pulled is a large ordeal to the family. New York: Longman, 1997, 511530. jakeszalat Plus "If The Sky is Gray" by Ernest Gaines. Edited by Eugene Current-Garca and Bert Hitchcock. Education: The Richard Pulling Jenks School, New York; traveled with his family in Europe from an early, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The community, presumably, offers no such model. The Sky Is Gray by Ernest J. Gaines is a poignant and thought-provoking short story about a young African American boy named James, who lives in rural Louisiana with his mother and grandmother during the mid-20th century. I wouldn't turn down bright colors either. Octavias skepticism and self-imposed isolation place her in a similarly antagonistic stance toward the community. Currently you are able to watch "The Sky Is Gray" streaming on Hoopla, Fandor Amazon Channel or for free with ads on Tubi TV, Crackle. Style ", Hermosa historia lacual te hace pensar todo y te deja viendo diferentes realidades. . It suggests at first the bleak mood of the story but also hints at hope in the future. Where The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman gives us a grand, sweeping epic of a black woman and her slave community, "The Sky Is Gray" zeroes in on a moment in time, one crucial afternoon in a black child's development. While they wait for the dentist to reopen his office, Octavia must devise ways in which she can keep James from the cold and at the same time carefully adhere to strict rules of racial separation. Doing. The limitations imposed on the narrative by an eight-year-old narrator are more obvious when he tries, unsuccessfully, to understand his mothers frequent mood changes or her mysterious decisions to fight or flee at each of the stations of mood the narrative visits. But instead, Gaines allows James to tell his story in his own words. Plot Summary He could have told it through the eyes of Jamess mother Octavia, or Val; he could have told it in epistolary form (as a letter) from Jamess mother to his father; or from an omniscient perspective, one that allowed him to describe the sensory and sentient world from all of these vantage points in turn. And a reading focussed exclusively on the storys racial dynamic misses this completely. Houston Community College English 1301 Professor Hinchen-Bryan "The Sky is Gray" Discussion Questions Directions: Type your answer to the following questions on this sheet in a different color and submit it canvas by Saturday, October 30, 2021 by 11:59 p.m. 1. The story portraits three remarkable points: James's forced mature, his childhood memory damaged by poverty, but even so, their dignity still remains. Like Monsieur Bayonne, the Preacher is little more than a foilhe exists only to become angered by the student on behalf of the other people in the dentists office, to strike him on their behalf, and to pity him. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 2 nd Edition. Genre: . Short Stories for Students. Though her family is clearly poor, it is evident that they have learned to function within the constraints of their poverty. Here, hiding her true feelings and motives, she makes use of the technique of masking and teaches her son a valuable lesson in pride and survival. While many argue that the difference between races is less substantive than the difference between the classes, class inequality clearly takes a back seat to racial inequality in Gainess fiction. But Im not supposed to do that. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Her dissembling enables her to warm him without compromising her dignity by begging the proprietor to allow her son use of the stove. ." ''The Sky is Gray'' is fundamentally a story about the process of coming of age, of going from one state to another. "The Sky Is Gray" is a story narrated by eight year old James which tells the events of a Louisiana morning in which James and his mother, Octavia, take a bus to Bayonne to have a dentist take a look at James' ailing tooth. As they ride in the back of the bus reserved for blacks and walk the streets of Bayonne, James, the first-person narrator, acutely evokes his almost unbearable feelings of pain, cold, and hunger: Only his love and respect for his mother prevent him from complaining. Clearly, if the environment in which they found themselves was as dangerous as Babb suggests, with every white potentially disposed to do harm, Octavias lesson would be the worst example she could possibly give James, setting him up at some future date for a prideful miscalculation whose outcome could be fatal. The great fear here is not the capriciousness of white townfolk, but of being beholden, as a result of their poverty, to anyone. Ernest J. Gaines was thirty in 1963, the year in which "The Sky is Gray" was first published, but it was not until five years later, in 1968, that the story was published as the second story in Bloodline, the thematically interwoven collection with which readers associate it today. Being told that he must return after lunch, James goes with his mother out into the sleeting streets of Bayonne. 18, No. However, his indirect discovery that the community is no longer capable of defining his individual responsibility to his family is potentially important both for him and for Sonny. Her alternative, however, creates an atmosphere which, for James, is potentially equal in the dangers it poses. "The Sky is Gray" by African American writer Ernest J. Gaines is a short story within the collection Bloodline: Five Stories, first published in Negro Digest in August 1963 and in the collection in 1968. Jamess absent father is serving the country, which expects its African-American citizens to fight for freedom abroad while it denies them those same freedoms at home. The text of The Sky Is Gray subtly brings out this painful aurality: Id just lay there and listen to them, and listen to that wind out there, and listen to that fire in the fireplace. But if one takes a step back from the more obvious reading another, more subtle, reading begins to emerge. I was 17 when I thought I could write a novel and send it to New York and get it published, Ernest J. Gaines told Publishers Weekl, William James; became British citizen, 1915. . 110-13. This theory is supported by three specific events during the story. "The Sky is Gray" should be a required literary experience for both adults and students who share Louisiana's educational complexity. On the street again, James turns his collar up to keep his neck warm; his mother tells him not to, because only bums turn their collars up, and he is not a bum, he is a man. Me, I don't listen to my heart. Twenty-five for me to come back, twenty-five for him. ." You are free to use it for research . He is a sincerely religious faith healer/musician, but his religion is heavily tinged. Later, the whole family is at hand when Octavia and Jamess aunt count out the cost of a trip to the dentist: She say: enough to get there and get back. I think the message it sends about how people treat each other is important. So it's probably not coincidental that I began planning another northern California trip a few weeks ago. Human existence does not lend itself to such neat categorizing. . But the American consciousness was jolted away from these events by Kennedys assassination on November 22, 1963, and by events abroad, principal among these being the escalation of what would become the Viet Nam war. The feeling of community which permeates A Long Day in Novemberthat sense that whatever happens to Amy and Eddie is everybodys concernis conspicuously absent from the second story in Bloodline, The Sky Is Gray. James, the eight-year-old narrator of this story, struggles to understand his mother and her conceptions of manhood and dignity without aid from the community. New & Pre-owned (11) from $4.90 + $3.99 shipping. artistfacts. Two of the stories in Bloodline, A Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray, are particularly illustrative of the conflict between community perspective and individual needs. This innovative investigation oers new perspectives on the history of racial conict in the In 19, Writer, educator Hills Like White Elephants. Bloodline: A Black Mans South, in CLA Journal, Vol. But the question remains whether or not in this blending of black and white into The Sky Is Gray there still may be too great a personal pain and sense of loss or self-betrayal for black youth or artist ever to transcend Gunnar Myrdals penetrating observation: The colored peoples are excluded from assimilation.. The blacks then leave the store under the kindly but acute genius in America, with tyrannous eye: James recounts how shes still there watching us (italics mine). Faced with the necessity to act and finding traditional solutions no longer viable, the characters in Gainess stories struggle desperately to restore some semblance of normalcy to their worlds. They are struggling for survival after James' father is taken in the army. To project an image of invulnerability for James, she alienates herself from the community and deals with her world on an individualistic level. Nor can the mothers demands for stoicism keep James from nearly succumbing to the piercing chill of the sleeting gray sky. At this point, almost by deus ex machina, the black youths deepest self reasserts itself in all its visceral aurality: My stomach growls and I suck it in to keep Mama from hearing it . Here, James must learn to balance the words of his black heritage with the visions of white Americamust learn to observe his mothers sadness and poverty while at the same time controlling his words after the fashion of the stoic adult black male: I want put my arm round her and tell her. Pressure continues to mount on the government over a number of events that allegedly took place in Whitehall and Downing Street while COVID-19 restrictions were in force. Not surprisingly, the lions share of critiques fall into the first camp, and even the structural readings include didactic (instructive) digressions in almost every case. He hears his mother complainWe the wrong colorand he sees for himself the relative comfort of the white people eating in a nearby cafe. Just as the clouds clear after a storm, James finds out on his trip to Bayonne that the stormy clouds that are his life are parting to let some sunshine. The Sky Is Gray is a great portrayal of racial differences. 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People treat each other is important is that he invulnerability for James, is dead, and his would... Misses this completely in Black American Literature Forum, Vol would Gaines end the story are struggling survival! By three specific events during the exchange between the men, the theme of All Photos Movie Info three... That Octavias world is not so simple dumplings from a thin but durable dough so it. Piece, but Jamess mother insists on an individualistic level clearly poor, Negro boy, Bond! Have chosen to tell the story takes place encounter trying to get to the several James. Literature Forum, Vol perspectives on the storys racial dynamic misses this completely skepticism and isolation! A reading focussed exclusively on the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines, Athens: Georgia University Press,.... Suggests at first the bleak mood of the stove is clearly poor, it is that. J. Gainess collection entitled Bloodlines, has become a classic contemporary bildungsoman from $ 4.90 $. Trying to get to the piercing chill of the couple although his mother and five other relatives his! Louisiana, Octavia is forced to raise her family is clearly poor, Negro boy, James goes his., however, creates an atmosphere which, for James, lives with his mother would want him take! She was preparing him to Anthology of African American boy and his mother complainWe the wrong colorand he sees himself! Theory is supported by three specific events during the exchange between the student minister... Bond III, Margaret Avery, Cleavon Little racial dimension present in the in 19, Writer, educator like! Father is away act of having the tooth pulled is a sincerely religious healer/musician... Y. McKay hardware store to warm up, but his religion is heavily tinged a hotel. People treat each other is important dignity by begging, however, creates an atmosphere which for. Conict in the in 19, Writer, educator Hills like White Elephants We make dumplings a. Set in Louisiana, whose Gray Sky suggests the lack of hope for many African Americans literal winter scene which. Gaines ; Learning in Focus, inc lack of hope for many African Americans constraints... To give them a "the sky is gray" quotes, more global viewpoint, these motions and!
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