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Essay about Half Brother by Holli Chang

Decent Essays

Characters: Ben - He is the main character, he is also the one telling the story about what happened to his family and Zan. At the beginning of the story, Ben didn’t want or like Zan. He thought he would take up too much of his time and be annoying. As the story progressed, he began to like Zan and they continued bonding together and eventually became best friends. As the story ended, Ben became the kind, loving person that got to keep and protect Zan. Richard Tomlin - He is the father who is working on a Doctorate. He is also trying to prove to the world that animals can understand and learn American Sign Language. At the beginning of the story, he was not there for Zan; but as the project grew he began to like Zan. At the end, …show more content…

The author did this to show the conflicting sides of having a scientific animal in your home and also to show the conflicting sides of animal testing.

Order: The order of the story is from start to end as a two year time period. There are some flashbacks in this that show how they got to their new home and how they got Zan. The rest of the story is in order from start to end. This is shown thru the growth and development of Zan and the Tomlin household. Textual evidence of this is that in some points of the book, it gives dates, times, sometimes season and eclipses in years.

Point of View: The main point of view is from Ben Tomlin. Ben is telling the story of what happened to Zan. This is shown throughout the text with “I” and “we” and other third person phrases. Ben was biased toward protecting Zan and helping him learn ASL. This is also probably showing that the author for some good types of animal testing and against bad animal testing. In the story Ben finds out that his father is also running tests on rats with different drugs. Ben feels betrayed and sad and feels these types of animal testing should not be done on animals. Ben talks to his dad about it; but his dad dismisses it. The author does this so that the story isn’t narrated by a random voice, but is narrated by the main character and it goes thru his everyday life and shows the pros and

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