Across all species and throughout all of time, people and animals have been forming bonds, breaking them, and creating new ones. In the scientific essay “Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey Connect” Frans de Waal explains the forces that cause us to do and feel the things that those around us are doing. In the Latin American short story “And of Clay Are We Created” Isabel Allende produces feelings of sorrow in the reader with a story of a tragedy that causes three people to form bonds of different kinds. In the free verse poem “At Dusk” Natasha Trethewey makes us feel wistful with a short poem about the bonds shared with lost ones and with those coming home. Two of the authors, Isabel Allende and Natasha Trethewey, look at bonds through realistic fiction or narrative pieces while Frans de Waal examines bonds from a scientific point of view. “In Monkey See, Monkey Do Monkey Connect” Frans de Waal uses the study of monkeys to answer the questions how important are bonds and why do we connect with some people and not others. One study that was done shows that to learn an ape needs to see “actual fellow apes”, Waal 126; their learning only happens when they see a different ape in “flesh and blood”, Waal 126. Apes need bonds to learn how to survive and accomplish things. In the essay, Waal also talks about how we connect with some people and not others. In order to connect with someone we need to be able to empathize with them. However, this doesn’t happen in our brain. Empathy
