Half Brother and Nim Chimpsky The book Half Brother, written by Kenneth Oppel, follows fictional teenager Ben’s time spent with his chimp brother Zan during and after his father’s experiment, Project Zan. While this story is fictional, there are other, similar stories of chimps being raised as humans that actually happened. One example is Nim Chimpsky. Nim was named as a pun of the scientist Nom Chomsky, who theorised that only humans could use language (McDonagh, 18-20). In 1973, Dr. Herbert Terrace stole Nim from his mother two weeks after he was born at the Institute of Primate Studies in Norman, Oklahoma (Kappala-Ramsamy, web), and started his experiment. Dr. Terrace thought that by raising Nim as a human, he would be more likely to learn American Sign Language, disproving Nom Chomsky’s theory (McDonagh, 18-20). Although there are several similarities and differences between Nim’s life and Half Brother, Nim’s life was considerably worse than Zan’s. Nim’s first caretaker was a student of Terrace’s by the name of Stephanie Lafarge. At the time she was having an affair with Terrace, which most likely influenced his decision to have her raise Nim. Lafarge was a mother at the time, and a very open person, even breastfeeding Nim at some times. Their…show more content… While Project Nim is recorded from a reporter’s perspective, Half Brother is written from Ben’s perspective. This allows for a more constant and emotional viewpoint on the familiar story. The reader sees the story of the chimp that would be human through the eyes of his “brother,” instead of limited eyes of a reporter. This brings out the emotion during the rough scenes, such as when Zan is sent away to a research center, and when Ben finds out that he is going to be sent to a medical testing facility. Consequently, this also causes a biased opinion against the father, who is trying to do the best he can in a bad situation, but makes several
