Literature Circle - Half Brother

     Our essential question for the book, "Half Brother" by Kenneth Oppel is, did Ben and his dad's relationship improve? Ben and his dad did get a bit closer because they would work together with Zan, the monkey, and that would allow them to spend time together and communicate, but at the same time they did drift apart. The reason that Ben and his dad drifted was because they had different opinions on Zan. At the end of the book Ben and his dad's relationship eventually got better because they had to work together to save Zan from a horrible place.

     The article that my group chose to connect with our book is, "Chimpanzees in Laboratories".  We chose this article because in the book "Half Brother" the main character, Zan, was being treated like he was an experiment. This article talks about how the chimps are being treated. The chimps that are being held in a U.S. laboratory are intentionally being given diseases. In the article it states,"Most chimpanzees in U.S. laboratories were intentionally given diseases—such as HIV, hepatitis, cancer, respiratory viruses, malaria, and heart disease—... experimentation determined that chimpanzees’ bodies do not react in the same way to these diseases as humans’ do." This quote is showing that scientists are testing the chimps by giving them diseases and seeing how they react to it. This is considered animal cruelty because they are basically killing the chimps. The majority of these diseases are not curable.

     This article reminds me about the book because the way the author described how Zan was being taught, it sounded like he was kept in a laboratory half the times. Ben's dad had a chair that they strapped Zan in if he did not behave. Ben hated that chair because Zan would have a tantrum and it would not improve his behavior.  In the book it says, "Zan was buckled into the learning chair, struggling and screaming." The reason Zan was being treated like this was because of Richard, Ben's dad. Richard did not have any feelings towards Zan until the end of the book. For most of the book all he cared about was being successful. Richard said that having feelings towards the experiment will affect the results. The attitude that Richard had really got Ben mad because he just hated how his dad only cared about himself. Animal rights was the theme in both the article, "Chimpanzees in Laboratories" and the book, "Half Brother". 

     Different mediums affect the way animal rights are portrayed by using different information and visuals. For example if you use a video, you can actually see how the chimpanzees are being treated. Videos tend to show more emotion too because since you are watching how they are being treated, than the viewers might feel bad for the chimps. An article shows more information and it is more recent. Articles can be easier to understand because the information is right there. I prefer videos because I would actually want to see how the chimps are being treated instead of an article describing how they are treated.

     The difference between an article and a video is that an article is more informational and has less feelings than a video. Videos show more emotion because of the content that is being shown. An article is more descriptive and a video has minimal information. The similarities between an article and a video is that they both give enough information to understand the topic. Both mediums can be neutral depending on the topic. Overall, all mediums have their benefits and their disadvantages, but are all beneficial in the end.