The House of the Scorpion - Thoughts So Far

We have started to read The House of the Scorpion and I have to say it is an incredibly interesting novel... so far. We have read the first section which was Youth 0-6. The story starts in a lab, where a character named Eduardo is trying to create a clone of Matteo Alacran (El Patron). Why was he so frantic to have at least one clone created? Why was it so important for at least one of the embryos to survive? Most importantly, why did El Patron want a clone in the first place? The story started off leaving many different questions in my brain and so far, I don't have the answers. Throughout this section, Nancy Farmer talks about how clones are despised in the future. They are not considered to be human beings. When Matt first comes into contact with different children, their thoughts toward him change when the children find out that Matt is a clone. Why did she guide her story in that direction? What kind of events happened when she was creating this novel that inspired her to create this type of a novel? After reading this section I have an inference that Nancy Farmer named her novel The House of the Scorpion because the main family of this novel is the Alacran Family. Alacran means scorpion in Spanish. It is clear after reading this much that Matteo Alacran, the clone, is the protagonist of the story however it is unclear who, or what, is the antagonist. I think that the society may be the antagonist of the story because everybody, except a couple of people, despise clones. Why doesn't Maria despise clones like the rest of her family? This makes me wonder, if clones were introduced to our modern day society in a way that they are in the book, how would we react to the change? How would we treat the clones? How many people in our society would treat clones the way Maria treats Matt? Overall I am really looking forward to reading the rest of the novel and hopefully answering some of my questions.

The House of the Scorpion

For the next few months we are starting a new project. Previously we would read a book and do a review on it to show our understanding of the novel. Now we are going start reading the book The House of the Scorpion. I will be posting what I think of the novel and other elements such as the theme, narrative mapping, characterization, setting, connections to real world issues, and film study. If you want to take a look at new litspiration challenges and our group discussions, the page Scorpioness. This is a quite a change compared to what we have been doing for the majority of the year and I think it will be a very interesting experience. I am looking forward to reading The House of the Scorpion because it seems like something I would read.