House of the Scropion (Book Review)

The book House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer was a very interesting book in my opinion. It tells the life of a boy named Matteo Alacran and his struggles to understand himself. Because you see, Matt isn’t an ordinary boy; he is a clone of a powerful drug lord called El Patron. Matt grew up in small house in the middle of a poppy field strip in Opium, what used to be part of Mexico. The story takes place in the future where technology has advanced so much they are able to create clones and other amazing creations. Matt has no parents though, he was taken care of by a caregiver named Celia, who was pretty much a mother to Matt. Matteo Alacran is hated though, not because he’s bad or mean, but because he is simply a clone. It seems that the clones in this book have built up a shoddy relationship with everyone else. Everyone hates Matt, except for Celia, Maria and El Patron, who loves Matt like he loves himself, because Matt is himself. After being brought to the Big House, he is treated like loyalty by El Patron and gets his very own body guard, Tam Lin. As Matt continues to struggle on understanding himself, he and Tam Lin have become quite the friends and went on various adventures together in secret. The protagonist of this book is obviously Matteo Alacran, which you can tell very quickly at the beginning of the book. His allies include Celia, El Patron and Tam Lin. He does meet other people through out the book and you can find out whether their allies or not with Matt. The Antagonist’s include Rosa and Tom, who probably hate Matt the most. The book was very well written in my opinion; each character had their own original and different personalities and interacted with each other very well. One thing that was really good about the book was how Nancy Famer didn’t give the personalities and look of each character immediately. Instead she gradually built up each character looks and personalities with little descriptions through out the book. The book also had rich sections that included some great action and suspense. At the end of each chapter, it always ended with a cliffhanger that made you always want to read on and never stop. The book also demonstrated lots of rich and descriptive language and made the scene very clear of what was happening inside the book. To me, the book started slow but slowly built up and was really good during the middle, it continued this way all the way to the end but I was kind of disappointed at the very ending. The very end sort of just dropped from all the action and suspense, which kind of disappointed me. Another thing that I though Nancy Famer did well in the book are twists. There are a lot of twists in the book that shock and surprise you; I thought that this was a really good aspect to the book that also helped keep the readers attention. Overall, this was a very good book in my opinion; it included many of the factors that make a great book. I would give this book a 9/10.

HoTS vs Gattaca

I found that the main characters in House of the Scorpion and in Gattaca were quite different in my opinion. In the book, Matt is completely a clone, he was not born from a mother and has no family, and instead he was harvested from a cow and has the exact DNA from the outside in as El Patron. In the movie, Vincent was actually born and has a family; he is his own person with his own separate DNA. The only similar things about the two characters is that Matt is a clone of El Patron and Vincent is trying to be a clone of Jerome even though the two are completely different. Vincent was born with several disabilities which stopped his dream to travel to space, to fulfill his dream though, he pretended to be Jerome Morrow who was healthy enough to go to space but lost both his legs in accident. Both Matt and Vincent interact with surrounding characters very differently. In the House of the Scorpion, most of the characters hate Matt because he is a clone except for a few like Tam Lin and Celia. In Gattaca though, Vincent is actually treated better when he tries to be a clone of someone else. Both of these stories do have some things similar though, each one takes place in the future where they have the technology to do incredible things, like make clones. Along with the difference between the two characters Matt and Vincent, there are some familiar things with the people who interact with them. Although most of the Alacran family hates Matt, Maria still believes that Matt is a good person despite being a clone. She tags alone side with Matt helping him escape from Opium. After the murder of the dictator, Vincent must avoid being caught by the police at all times. Through all of this action, Vincent meets an ally, Irene Cassini, a workmate. Later Irene finds out that Vincent isn’t really the guy who says he his but still stays as an ally helping Vincent to reach his goal of going to space. Overall, the two characters are very different in my opinion; they both live in different environments and have a different attitude to the people around him and vice versa. They both however have different events that changed their lives. Vincent had swimming competitions with his brother, and that one moment when he won for the first time, he knew that he was capable of great things. Matts lived changed from the imprisonment from Rosa. There, he learned different things about the people around, and it was there where he was rescued and introduced to El Patron.

The Orphanage and Plankton Factory

When Matt finally escapes the big house, he finds himself in an orphanage with other boy around his age. They all ended up in there the same way Matt did, trying to cross the border between Opium and Aztlan and losing their parents in the process. Matt than finds himself doing work in the orphanage and being bossed around by the keeper, Raul. This is sort of what it was like back in the house, being kept prisoned until El Patron rescued him. Of course later being betrayed by El Patron and almost dying. However things seem to be different for Matt in the orphanage. Unlike when he was in the big house, he isn’t hated here. In fact, most of the boys look up to Matt. Now this is probably because they don’t know that he is a clone, but it seems to me that even if they do figure out, some of them may still like Matt. This is probably because even though people think of him as different person, his personality is still the same. As Matt’s friendship grows stronger though, the keeper, Raul, is starting to hate him even more and thinks of Matt as an “Aristocrat.”  Later, Matt and a couple of his friends are transported to a plankton factory in San Luis. Here they grow plankton and Matt finds out that Aztlan uses plankton for pretty much any food. They use plankton in hotdogs, hamburgers, burritos, and even milk! To me, this is just plain gross. Matts job here was to help tend and grow the plankton, he was also ordered to help gather salt from giant salt mountains that were left behind after a lake dried up. Now obviously this isn’t the life that Matt expected he would find when he left Opium. In Opium and in the big house, Matt was treated like royalty. He could eat anything, get anything, and go anywhere he wanted to without being asked not to. Here in the plankton factory the keepers treat him like slaves. To me, it doesn’t seem as different in the plankton factory than when Matt was kept by Rosa.

Celia's story and border issues

http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Illegal-immigrants-arrested/story-15532461-detail/story.html

This article is talking about several men who have been arrested for illegal immigration action. The arrests were made in the UK on Wednesday and were based on tip-offs from which the agency has received. This is related to Celia’s story because she was also travelling in a group when Farm Patrol arrested her. In Celia’s story, the reason why she wanted to escape so badly was because the way she was living and how she was treated. She had such a horrible life that she was willing to risk her life and trust a ‘coyote’ just so she could get a better life. From this article though, I could make a connection to this issue. In the article it explained that five of the men were from Afghanistan. From this fact, I could assume that these five men were having a very hard time in Afghanistan and tried to escape into the UK so that they could live better. These people probably shared something similar with Celia; they must have been treated quite poorly and was willing to do anything to get out of that kind of life, much like Celia. They traveled in big groups like Celia’s story however the article did not explain that they might have gotten help from anyone else. In Celia’s story, her group got help from a ‘coyote’ that said he would help but ended up abandoning them and leaving the to the farm patrol. The people in this article did not have a guide like this, it seemed as if they just traveled by themselves without help and simply got caught because people were telling the police of these people that probably looked a bit suspicious. Now of course, it ended differently for these guys in the article than Celia’s story. Her story had a lot more at stake because the people that got caught turned into eejits while the people in the article only got arrested. But it still goes to show you how far people are willing to get to live a better life and I don’t blame them. If I was living in such I bad living condition, I would probably risk a lot to find a better place as well.

Setting of Novel

The setting Nancy Farmer intended for this book is showed differently to the reader than some other books. The first chapter in this book did not say much about setting instead it was more of a prologue explaining how Matt was born and how everything else started. However, this chapter did give you a clue of what time of year this story is taking place in. You can kind of hint that this story is taking place in the future by reading the first chapter, although it did not give a specific date, it tells you about people creating clones and using far more advanced technology that you might find in the future. The second is where the setting started to take place, in the chapter title itself, “ The little house in the Poppy Fields” it already sets the books beginning setting for the reader. To get a more general sense of the setting in this book you need to look earlier, even before the first chapter of the book. On one page of the book, it explains Alacran’s Family History. In most of the earlier generations of the family, it says they all lived or died in Mexico. So from this, you can hint that the setting is taking place in a future Mexico. However, the entire setting in this book cannot be found immediately. As the reader progresses through the book, more and more of the setting is being revealed and each little part in some chapters help find the actual setting the book is taken place in. The season in this book is very obvious though, in the second chapter it explained about the white poppy field outside and didn’t mention anything about there being snow or if was cold or not. Also in chapter 3, it explained Matt being carried on a dry dirt path; this could mean that it wasn’t spring either. So from all of these small hints, the reader could easily point out that the current season in the book was summer.

Relationship between characters

There are a variety of relationships between the characters in the first section of this novel. Each character has different feelings towards one another and towards Matt. Once Matt has moved to the big house, he became very distant from Celia and started to have a much different relationship towards the people who live and worked in the big house. The relationship between Matt and Rosa are very obvious, they both hate each other but it seemed as if Rosa hated him an extra bit more. The kids in the big house changed their relationship with Matt as soon as they found out the he was a clone. At first, Tom, Maria, and Steven didn’t really hate Matt, they actually helped him when he fell on the glass, but once they found out he was a clone; their personalities changed immediately. They started to hate Matt and started to treat him very differently. Tom especially hated Matt; he would go into his room and shoot Matt with peas. One relationship that didn’t really change was between Matt and Maria, even though Maria knew that Matt was a clone, she still didn’t really hate him as much as the others. In fact, it seemed as if she actually liked Matt. An obvious foil relationship in the book was between Celia and Rosa. Both of them were caretakers for Matt, however they had a very different feeling towards Matt. Celia loved Matt like he was her son, but Rosa hated Matt. Another foil relationship was between Matt and Tom, they both hate each other but they also have very different personalities. Matt is more caring and forgiving and Tom is just being a jerk to everyone around him.