The House of the Scorpion - Connections to Real World Issues

Here are some connections I made with the novel and our world.

            There are many things that are wrong in our society, and yet what society is perfect? In The House of the Scorpion Nancy Farmer has written the story in such a way that you can’t help but think about and compare our two societies. Many of the problems we face today are talked about in the novel. One of them being Drug Trafficking. El Patron created Opium when he made a deal with the USA and Aztlan governments that he wouldn’t deal drugs in the two countries and would only sell to the costumers across the ocean, if they gave him that piece of land. Drug Trafficking is something that happens in our society today and illegal trades occur all the time. It is an issue that increases an individual's exposure to drugs, making more and more people addicted.

            Another issue that was stated in this novel was discrimination. Although it is not that forward, I noticed that there was discrimination between men and women. In our society, certain jobs give higher pay to men than women, even if they accomplish the same task. In the novel, I noticed that there were no women that had power in Opium. They were also treated poorly, more so than men. Another thing I noticed were the jobs of each gender. All the servants and cooks that Farmer talks about are women. All the guards and security people she talks about are men.

            The one issue that I found that was stated, and to me the most important, was child labor. In the section La Vida Nueva, it introduces the Keepers and the orphans. The orphans are fed thoughts that make them believe that child labor is required for their society to function. They are also beaten if they are not accomplishing their work properly. They are not fed properly either. In our society, there are certain countries in which child labor occurs and it robs a child of their childhood. Giving children the sense of fear from when they are young is not a good start to their lives. Another one I read about in this section was equality. I realized that their ideas of equality are far more strict than ours and equity isn't quite for the orphans of Aztlan.