One Hundred Years of Evil
Justin Douglas Outten
David Clausen
May 25, 2012
A3 AP English
Gate to Auschwitz Concentration Camp
1
Prologue
As hundreds of years passed, Dorian Henry, disgusted by the human race, realizes
that the human race is the root of all evil. Cursed with immortality, Henry is forced to
forever live life as a high-schooler. He is forced to outlive everyone he has ever known. He
has witnessed friends and family die. He has witnessed nations rise, and he has witnessed
nations fall. He has witnessed peace, and he has witnessed war. Dorian has had enough. He
can’t keep his secret buried away any longer. He needs to tell someone. He chose to reveal
his secret in his final essay: the iSearch.
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I couldn’t stay in one place for more than four years; otherwise people would
grow suspicious of my age. This time it was Seoul, South Korea. I was always on the
move, and I could never settle somewhere for too long. I’ve lived through history’s worst
years and its best. I’ve had my share of memories in Europe, the United States, the
Middle East, and even Korea, (before it was separated.) I’ve lived all over the world but
could never achieve comfort. My life was a curse.
When I was a seventeen, I lived in a small rural town in Edinburgh, England. I
can hardly remember if it was the seventeenth century or the eighteenth. Nonetheless, it
was quite some time ago, but I remember it clearly. One night I was in the woods looking
for firewood for my family, and suddenly, a gloomy aura filled the air behind me. I
turned around, dropping the wood that I had gathered. I stood motionless as a black
smoke covered me completely. The smoke left after a few moments. I was stunned. I
remember how those few seconds in the smoke felt like years. I knew nothing of what
had happened and told no one, for no one would believe me. Everyone would think I was
crazy or some poor young soul that need an exorcism. A poor farm boy didn’t need any
attention like that.
After a number of years, I noticed something different about me, or, more
specifically, absolutely nothing different. All my friends and family had shown signs of
wear and age. Wrinkles became more apparent on foreheads; hair grew on chests; baby
fat turned into muscle. But, not me. After 10 years, nothing about me had changed. I
recalled the moment of my life when I was approached by the blackness. A crazy thought
entered my mind: “I can’t age.” I tried committing suicide countless times, but to no
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avail. My skin would heal instantly and my scars would bury away under new skin.
Others around me kept aging, except me. My parents believed I was some demon, so they
abandoned me. I had nowhere to go. I fled my rural hometown and began living life
alone, surviving off what little money I could earn and going to schools to fit in.
I’ve been all over the world. I’ve lived in Europe for almost a century, many
decades in the Americas, a number of years in the Middle East, and now Asia. I survive
by fitting in. I falsify my identity, and I enroll in schools and find a small place to live.
Living in Seoul was my get away from the first world. I enrolled myself into a school that
involves students coming and going every two years. I’ve been here for three years so far.
I can’t remember how many times I’ve been a junior in high school. I don’t dare try and
guess how many of my beloved teachers I’ve out-lived. However, this year was different.
I was given an assignment to read four novels over the year and at the end, create an
essay that synthesizes the books’ major themes and ideas. I wanted to make this one
count, so I wrote about a time I was familiar with. A time I wanted to get past: the
twentieth century.
The twentieth century was the worst hundred years of the human race. Millions of
people died and millions more were affected. I chose to study novels that focused on
man’s inhumanity to man. I remember how women were treated like slaves just because
they were believed to be inferior to men, shown in Khaled Hosseini’s book, A Thousand
Splendid Suns. I remember when Korea was under turmoil and innocent people were sent
to live in gulags for crimes they didn’t commit, represented in Kang Chol-Hwan’s The
Aquariums of Pyongyang. I remember when the African-Americans were treated as
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unequal and as second class citizens just because of the color of their skin, just like in
Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help. I even remember the years where Hitler reigned in
Europe and persecuted Jews and other non-Aryans and committed genocide, depicted in
Elie Wiesel’s Night.
I chose these books because of the themes that pertained to each book: hope,
oppression, racism, inequality, injustice, and inhumanity. These six themes are the
epitome of the dark twentieth century filled with horrors and death. I remember how
each one of those themes played a part throughout the 1900s and throughout my four
novels. I shared something in common with the authors of each novel. Although I was
never in a concentration camp like Kang and Wiesel, I lived through the same era. I
understood the sadness they felt when their friends and family died. I knew how it felt to
be treated “like dogs” (17:22).
A short memoir full of genuine sadness and inhumanity, Night, by Elie Wiesel, is
about a young Jewish boy and his family who are “expelled” (17:3) with other “foreign
Jews from Sighet,” (17:3) his hometown. Stripped of his identity and family, Eliezer, a
fifteen year old boy, is disconnected from society and put into the Nazi Auschwitz
concentration camp with his father. In this camp, Eliezer and his father are forced to
sacrifice years of their life fighting for survival under constant oppression and
inhumanity.
As I read Night I remember the days I sat in the apartment cellar as bombs fell
from the London night sky. The sound of rumors of genocide and “camps” still ring in
my head: “Babies were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used them as
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targets.” (17:4) I remembered walking down the streets as I saw people with a yellow star
on their chests, matched with a look of sadness on their faces. The sadness in their faces
could not hide behind a smile like the smiles of the help in Kathryn Stockett’s novel: The
Help.
Living in a small town like Jackson, Mississipi for many years, I understood how
Aibileen and Minnie felt when their white overseers mistreated them daily. The Help was
a story about a handful of women, black and white, who were subject to racism and
sexism. In a racially segregated town like Jackson, many people were afraid to go against
the tacit codes about black and white integration; however Skeeter, a rebellious college
graduate, wasn’t. Through a series of interviews with black maids, Skeeter documents
their confessions and creates a book that narrates their memories and hardships; filled
with racism, inequality, and injustice, while working for white families as maids.
Just like in The Help, Khaled Hosseini, a denizen of Afghanistan, writes a novel
about the mistreatment of two women, Mariam and Laila, in a troublesome country and a
difficult time period: the 1970s. Subject to discrimination and abuse, both girls are forced
into an arranged marriage and must endure domestic abuse, poverty, starvation, and the
Taliban. I once lived in small city like Kabul, and it was quite normal to see very young
women partnered with much older men; results of arranged marriages. I can still see the
miserable eyes that were left uncovered by the traditional burqa1.
Tired of the extreme inequality and dangers, not only women, but everyone faced
in the Middle East, I moved to a remote location: Korea. Believing I was away from
1
- a required veil to cover Islamic women’s faces.
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genocide, from racial injustice, from domestic inhumanity, I lived life in the capital of
communist North Korea: Pyongyang. I was among many who were oppressed by the
state and forced to relinquish my personal possessions. I knew this place was no different
than Auschwitz, Poland, Jackson, Mississippi, or Kabul, Afghanistan.
Families like Kang’s were forced give up all that they owned to the Communist
Party. Kang’s family, along with other unlucky, innocent families, was wrongfully tried
and sentenced to ten years at Yodok’s labor camp. Disguised as a border patrol
headquarters, Yodok’s true purpose was hidden to the public and the inhumane activities
that occurred there were masked as well. Kang was forced to grow up quickly from the
back-breaking labor and his indigent family. Almost everyone one of my characters were
persecuted for something they could not control. Children are born into the world without
discrimination in their hearts. The way they are brought up into the world is what
corrupts them and turns them into racists and oppressors.
“Once upon a time they was two girls," I say. "one girl had black skin, one
girl had white." Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening. "Little colored girl
say to little white girl, 'How come your skin be so pale?'” White girl say, “'I
don't know. How come your skin be so black? What you think that mean?'"
“But neither one a them little girls knew. So little white girl say, 'Well, let's
see. You got hair, I got hair. '"I gives Mae Mobley a little tousle on her head.
"Little colored girl say 'I got a nose, you got a nose.'" I gives her little snout a
tweak. She got to reach up and do the same to me. "Little white girl say, 'I got
toes, you got toes.' And I do the little thing with her toes, but she can't get to
mine cause I got my white work shoes on. “So we's the same. Just a different
color” (14:198)
“Race is not a neutral concept” (6:1) in most of my novels. In a time when
everyone believed they were superior, it is easy to imagine someone taking action over
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their beliefs. People who treat others differently for something as uncontrollable as skin
color are comparable to villains like Hitler. Kathryn Stockett, an author from a racial
segregated town (2:1), writes about how blacks are treated unequally even though, under
law, they are considered equals. “Dirty ain’t a color, disease ain’t the Negro side a town. I
want to stop that moment from coming. . . when they start to think that colored folks ain’t
as good as whites.” (14:99)
When people begin to think they are better than someone else, a number of things
can happen. In the United States, segregation and race riots occurred. In Korea, labor
camps. In Europe, genocide. Racism has no limit. When a race is singled out as inferior,
injustice occurs. There are thousands of cases where people have been mistreated and
wronged because the color of their skin or their culture. When you are born, you don’t get
to choose what race you want to be; that is chosen for you.
In the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence, the forefathers of
our country said that “all men are created equal.” Hypocritically, this same nation’s
citizens racially discriminated against their own people: blacks, Asians, and even women.
Subject to sexism, (racism’s cousin), women had to endure the abuse that men do to
make themselves seem more superior to women. Raised with Islamic traditions (15:1),
Khaled Hosseini observed arranged marriages and spousal abuse everywhere he went.
Reading his novel made me reminisce of the Women’s Suffrage movement that took
place in America and the struggles that the women had to go through for basic rights such
as the right to vote and own property. This imbalance of rights wasn’t just unique to
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people of different race or color, but also to anyone who looked different or thought
differently.
I never understood why people thought blacks and women were different. Both,
coloreds and women are people. Nonetheless, someone always thought otherwise;
someone who believed “[coloreds] carry different kinds of diseases than we do.” (14:17)
I recall the segregated bathrooms for blacks and whites. Every little thing was segregated.
Blacks had their own restaurants, bathrooms, churches, and even movie theaters. I can
imagine nothing was different it Europe. “[Jews] were no longer allowed to go into
restaurants or cafés, to travel on the railways, to attend the synagogue, to go out into the
street after six o’clock.” (17:9) All people who were different by the majority’s standards
were considered inferior.
Early on in all four of my novels, the author creates an aura of unfairness: an aura
of inequality. If someone were to be different in thought or appearance, they were treated
as such: differently. The minority would be oppressed by the majority and forced to obey
their laws. In The Help, “colored folk ain’t allowed in that library,” (14:154) because
they are black. Settings even as simple as libraries were segregated. Everything about the
minorities’ lives were segregated from the majorities lives. Whites, Aryans, and men all
believed that they were better than blacks, Jews, and women, respectively. Those thought
to be superiors treated different people as viruses that needed to be controlled and
exterminated.
In my memories and my novels, there was always a group of people who were
victimized. Jews, blacks, and even women were treated as animals and like “swine.”
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(17:17) In a novel where sexism was a major theme, A Thousand Splendid Suns, women
were required to follow rules that limited what they could wear, where they could go, and
what they could do. Before the suffrage movement, women had a very limited role in
society. A woman’s main purpose in life was to tend to the needs of her husband and bear
children. Without a woman’s ability to accomplish these two tasks, she was rendered
useless and pathetic. “Oh you’re gonna have some kids. I mean, kids is the only thing
worth living for.” (14:40) Brainwashed by society’s expectations, women in both
Hosseini and Stockett’s novel are convinced that their sole role in the world was to have
children. With this clear division of people, the Jewish people, the African-Americans,
the women, and the minorities were maltreated and were subject to injustices.
When someone doesn’t like someone, they tend to treat each other as enemies;
they fight. Whites fought blacks. Nazis fought Jews. Men fought women. Injustice wasn’t
always as severe as violence, but often degraded the victims. Many targets of injustice
were forced to submit to their superiors. Women in Afghanistan were forced to obey their
parents and participate in arranged marriages. Later, the woman would have to obey her
husband and please him by any means necessary.
He slid under the blanket beside her. She could feel his hand working at his
belt, at the drawstring of her trousers. Her own hands clenched the sheets in
fistfuls. He rolled on top of her, wriggled and shifted, and she let out a
whimper, Mariam closed her eyes, gritted her teeth. The pain was sudden
and astonishing. (14:198)
Through the injustices of arranged marriages and the power of men over women, Mariam
and Rasheed’s second wife, Laila, were raped numerous times. Injustices to women were
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a common sight in countries where cultures differed from those of the modern world.
But, when it came to injustices to other men, the treatment was either just as bad or
worse.
Although violence was not a common form of injustice, it did happen. Mostly the
injustices exercised in my novels were harmful to the phycology of the characters. The
wrongs committed by the whites, Aryans, and men made the victims feel as if they were
inferior and had no power to resist their oppressors. The injustices gave the oppressors a
sense of control over their victims. “Then the police began suggesting my grandfather
should voluntarily bequeath his cherished Volvo to the government. The suggestions
became recommendations, the recommendations an order.” (8:34) In North Korea,
Kang’s family was forced to relinquish their beloved Volvo to the government. This
submission to the government demoralized the family and made them feel as if they had
no control or say in their lives.
Everywhere you went, you heard slurs. I had a daily routine every morning when
I lived in Jackson. Every morning I would go down to the diner and enjoy a cup of coffee
and a plate of delicious pancakes, and every time a black person would walk in, the
waiter would scream “Get outta here, nigger!” (:135) I never paid any attention to the
names they called the coloreds, but deep down inside I felt guilty. I knew there was
something wrong with that word. There were slurs for all kinds of people; Jews were
called kikes, blacks were called niggers, and Koreans were called chinks. These slurs,
along with the other injustices, made the blacks feel lesser than their oppressors. Kang,
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Mariam, Laila, Aibileen, Minny, and Eliezer could only hope for a way out, an escape
from their living nightmare.
Just as I had hoped to rid myself of my curse, the protagonists of my novels all
had hopes of surviving and enduring. Some characters in my novels even lost hope in
surviving. The things they experienced had changed them forever and they lost faith.
Despite all my cares, the black champion [the last surviving goldfish] died. . .
Seeing his lifeless body floating on the surface of the water filled me with
great sadness. . . By this time I was struggling with the problem of my own
survival and had little energy left for grieving. With his death, my former
world had taken another step. (8:75)
This quote from The Aquariums of Pyongyang shows that the loss of something
sentimental, his goldfish, could alter his will to survive and persevere.
Living in a concentration camp for years can be devastating to a person’s morale,
and this devastation is reflected in Kang and Wiesel’s loss of hope and endurance. Their
loss was purely due to the fact that were forced to witness and experience, first-hand,
sheer inhumanity from the Nazis and the North Koreans. In Night, Eliezer narrated a
story about a man who asked, “’Where is God now?,’” (17:62) and another man
answered, “’He is hanging here on this gallows.’” (17:62)
Not everyone faced the amount of injustice and inhumanity that Kang and Eliezer
faced. Their faith and hope were put under extreme pressure, and not many can say they
still had hope. The women of my book, Mariam and Laila of A Thousand Splendid Suns
and Aibileen and Minnie of The Help, were women who had the strength will to endure
their injustice. They preserved and kept fighting until the end. Miriam and Laila believed
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they had a chance to a better life. “They would make new lives for themselves—peaceful,
solitary lives—and there the weight of all that they’d endure would lift from them, and
they would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.”
(7:354) Reading these novels reminded me of how I once lost hope and tried taking my
own life. The hope that these two women had of surviving their living nightmare was
immeasurable when compared to mine.
Even Aibileen and Minnie, from The Help, went against the tacit codes of their
culture and spoke out against the whites. The women hoped for a time when they could
be free of racism, inequality, and injustice. “I realized I actually had a choice in what I
could believe.” (14:68) With the friendship and deep connections with children and their
help, Skeeter is able to find hope in becoming something other than the average,
conforming housewife with a suitable husband and children. Hope was something that
went both ways in my conquest back to the twentieth century. Hope could be lost and it
could be found, however it was something that played a vital role in each and every
character in my novels.
In every part of the world I’ve lived in, almost everyone experiences some form
of oppression. Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel or
unjust manner.2 Whether the oppression is practiced by an abusive husband, a number of
white women, Nazi guards, or North Korean communists, the oppression is all the same
and has a damaging effect on every single individual. Each book varied on the type of
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppression
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oppression that was exercised. Some were oppressed verbally, some physically, and some
mentally.
Walking down the street and finding a pro-Nazi poster was a common sight in
1940s Europe. Everywhere I walked there were posters of Uncle Sam, Hitler, and
Churchill: each poster trying to oppress us mentally and convince us that their cause was
more right than the other. In concentration camps like the one Elie and Kang depicted,
the Nazis and North Koreans, respectively, used mental oppression to try and diminish
the morale of the prisoners.
“The punishment for attempted escape is execution. No exceptions.” The
guards make the whole village come out to watch it. . . So given all that, I
have a hard time seeing the mountains as very beautiful. We were silent, but
the look on our faces, must have communicated our horror. (8:57)
Elie and Kang’s oppressors would use fear and threats to weaken their spirits.
Oppression was something that all people faced. It was faced by women and men
alike. Oppression was even exercised by women! In Stockett’s novel, The Help, the black
maids are oppressed by their white superiors. “It was so obvious what she wanted. Hilly
cleared her throat and finally Aibileen lowered her head. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ She
whispered.” Fearing the loss of their jobs, Aibileen and Minnie did what their white,
female oppressors told them to do. Not only would the antagonists of my novels use
verbal oppression, but also physical oppression.
Machiavelli once asked, “Is it better to be loved than feared or feared than
loved?” Obviously in some of my novels violence and fear were used to have a sense of
power over someone. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Rasheed uses violence to keep
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Mariam from acting out and embarrassing him. He punishes her by forcing her to chew
rocks. “Mariam chewed. Something in the back of her mouth cracked. ‘Good,’ Rasheed
said.” (8:104) During a time of war, physical strength is used to oppress others. Strength
shows that no one is above you, and that is exactly what the Nazis and the North Koreans
showed to the prisoners in the camps and gulags. These oppressors showed their strength
by committing acts of terror and pure inhumanity.
Everywhere I have been, there has been violence; but, only in few places have I
witnessed inhumanity. The fact that people can commit acts of such horror and
inhumanity is unbelievable. “’Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today
anything is allowed. Anything is possible, even these crematories.’” (17:30) Inhumanity
can be seen throughout the world, it is seen in Europe, the United States, the Middle East,
and even in the Far East. However, not all inhumanity is in the form of genocide; some
forms are depicted through local, domestic violence.
In each of my novels, inhumanity is practiced most commonly through acts of
extreme violence. Two of my novels, The Help and A Thousand Splendid Suns,
represented inhumanity on a more local scale, while my other two novels contained
motifs of inhumanity on a much more global scale: so global in fact that it was
considered genocide. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Laila and Mariam are beaten and
raped over and over by their abusive husband, Rasheed; whereas, in my other novels
“babies were thrown into the air and machine gunners [would use] them as targets.”
(17:4)
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I remember reading the daily newspaper and splashed on the front page would be
a black and white image of hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies piled on top of one
another, and the headlines would read “GENOCIDE.” How can someone murder millions
of innocent people due to something they had no say in: their race. The oppressors didn’t
hold back when they wanted to show their power. “Without passion, without haste, they
slaughtered” (17:4) hundreds of people day in and day out. The murders would not
hesitate when they had a chance to express their power.
A Myong-Chul, a former camp guard who escaped to the South, has talked
about the barbarous punishment he saw inflicted on women found guilty of
sexual relations. There was a pregnant woman who was bound to a tree and
flogged, another who had her breasts cut off, a third who died after being
raped with a spade handle.” (8:146)
Acts like the one quoted above are acts that have been committed over and over, without
hesitation. These horrors not only leave scars on flesh, but they also scar on the soul.
Witnessing millions of dead bodies through the newspaper is nightmare enough. I
can only imagine the torment that victims of the Holocaust or North Korean gulags had to
suffer. Being a part of something as inhumane as genocide, constant spousal abuse, or
starvation, can affect a person’s outlook on the world. The victims remained the same
physically; however, inside, “a dark flame had entered into [their] soul[s] and devoured
[them].” Over time, the constant struggle to survive changed people. People would fight
one another over a few breadcrumbs or an extra spoonful of soup. Sons would betray
their fathers. These atrocities turned civilized men into savages.
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp which has turned my
life into one long night. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget
16
the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of
smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which
consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which
deprived me of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which
turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am
condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. (17:32)
I can’t imagine a worse century. I’ve stopped counting birthdays, for I don’t want
to know how long my curse has been around. But if I were to guess how old I am, I
would assume almost 300 years old. I’ve been through it all. I’ve seen nations rise. I’ve
seen them fall. I’ve seen peace, and I’ve seen war. I’ve seen many die. I’ve lived too long
to be able to bear any more death and injustice on the scale of any of the genocides and
injustices in my novels.
Humanity needs to change the way it has been acting. We, as people, cannot fight
among ourselves. We cannot decide who is better than someone else. The world needs
more organizations like the United Nations and the World Peace Council. I’ve lived my
share of years and I’ve kept my lips sealed for too long. The world needs peace. I, and
many others, believe that the world needs to end the fighting. End the bloodshed. I will
not stand for a society that will discriminate people based on someone’s skin color or
ethnicity. Bob Marley, prominent musician, once said that “the color of a man's skin is of
no more significance than the color of his eyes.” Until that statement has become true, I
cannot live among oppressors and murderers.
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
- Elie Wiesel
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Epilogue
Tired of life, tired of school, and tired of the world, Dorian chose to escape
society and to live on his own. With the money he’s saved over the numerous centuries,
Dorian fled society and lived a life of peace. He ran away to Switzerland, a country of
peace and tranquility, where he could avoid inequality, oppression, racism, injustice, and
inhumanity.
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About the Author
Justin Douglas Outten, born in a cotton field to Jameson
Outten and Victoria Davidson, grew up in a small town
in Ohio with his four sisters. He dropped out of school
at aged sixteen and escaped with his girlfriend, Katrina,
to Florida to pursue his dream in surfing. Four years
after arriving, he got attack by a great white shark and
lost his right leg. He became a vegetable and had to stay
in bed all day, so he decided to pass time by writing about the times he had surfed. In
1968, he published his first book, and continued writing until he died in 1998.
19
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18. Windrem, Robert. "Death, Terror in N. Korea Gulag." Msnbc.com. Msnbc Digital Network.
Web. 26 May 2012. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071466/ns/us_newsonly_on_msnbc_com/t/death-terror-n-korea-gulag/>.
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