In the novel, The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer, we see the journey of one boy, named Matt Alacran. His life is turned upside down all because of his loneliness and curiosity. Going from ages 0 to 14, we are able to see what it means to be human and the value of life through the eyes of a clone. In the beginning of The House of the Scorpion, we see a scientist named Eduardo who is trying to grow 36 human cells, but in the end only one survives. That one cell is Matt, the clone of a drug lord of Opium named El Patron. From ages zero to six, Matt lives a life away from everybody with Celia, his caretaker, who works in the House of Alacran. As the novel continues, he is discovered by the kids who live in the House. From this point …show more content…
While Celia, his care taker, went to work, Matt would sit in his room and read his book to his toys. He would quickly realize how lonely his home was and when the kids of the Alacran House appeared at his window, he was very excited. He broke the window and climbed out, injuring himself. He was willing to be friends with anyone that he trusted all of them until they began treating like an animal when they realized he was a clone. He searched for true friends, but many saw Matt as a lab project. People wanted to get rid of him except Maria, Celia, Tam Lin, and El Patron, so Matt was determined to show others he was more than just a clone. He wanted to be respected and treated like a human being, but to reach his goals he runs into many obstacles that lead to unexpected …show more content…
Matt is faced with fact that he will die to help El Patron. To escape his horrible fate, Matt escapes to Aztlan, but is taken to a plankton farm and must escape once again. While facing all these obstacles, Matt Alacran never gives up achieving what he wants. In the end we can see Matt had friends who trusted him and didn’t care if he was a clone, such as Maria, Celia, Chaco, and Fidelito. When he returns back to Opium and hears about Tam Lin’s sacrifice, he sets his mind to freeing the eejits and making Opium into a better land. Overall, he became someone people can trust and someone who wasn’t just El Patron’s clone, but just Matt Alacran. This novel was able to show readers the true meaning of what it is to a human through a clone’s eyes who has been going through a tough journey to become a person with a good
In the beginning of the story, “The House of the Scorpions,” the setting starts off in the future in an area in Mexico and Opium. The first character that is introduced is Matt, a clone in Mexico that no one like because of him being a clone. The main conflict in the story is that since Matt is a clone no one will ever accept him for who he is because clones aren’t liked due to them not being like humans. He comes to Opium knowing no one but a girl named Celia who is a chief cook and Matt’s caregiver. Many different characters were introduced along the way. Some who were greedy and cruel and others who were helpful with Matt and helped him get to where he needed to be. The ending of the book was resolved when Matt discovered that everyone at El Patron's party had died because of the wine that was served at the party. Matt had again arrived at Opium and he finally became patron of Opium. He also found out that Maria, a younger daughter of Senator Mendoza who was a powerful politician in the United States and father of Maria and Emilia, found her mother, Esperanza. He was quite devastated to find out that they finally met each other but he had to deal with it anyway one way or another. Lastly, Matt spoke to Tam-Lin, his bodyguard, and Tam Lin encouraged Matt to keep going on and that he can do it.
First, Matt grows up by accepting his identity. In this book Matt faces a bunch of problems that have to deal with him being a clone. Everybody besides a select few, discriminate against him for
follows the life of a boy named Matt Alacrán throughout the first fourteen years of his life. In the country Opium during a futuristic time period, Matt lives with his “mom like figure” named Celia, who is actually a caretaker and housekeeper at the residence of El Patron. El Patrón is a very wealthy man who is 148 years old. He manages to live for so long due to his production of eejits, which are clones that he relies on for transplants. With his need to live, Matt is created as a clone. The everyday circumstances that everyone else face, become magnified to a much greater extent for Matt since he’s a clone. Since Matt is technically El Patrons life, he gets special, precautious treatment. This special treatment vanishes when Celia and Matt ally their forces to cease the transferring of organs between Matt and El Patron. El Patron died and Tam Lin, the bodyguard of Matt, was ordered to kill Matt. Since they were close, Tam Lin helped Matt escape to quickly get across the border. Matt just makes it across the border but is put into a home with other orphans. There he makes friends with three boys named Chacho, Fidelto, and Ton-Ton who are partners in his escape. When they finally escape from the boneyard, Matt reunites with Celia to be told that he is not a clone anymore, but a human that is now the owner of Opium.
A character in this story that plays an important part is Matt’s friend, Maria. Maria is always kind to Matt and although he is a clone, Maria still loves him and likes talking to him and Matt also loves Maria. Maria is always kind to Matt and has wanted to play with him ever since they met. On page 15 Maria shouts,“Hey, boy! What’s your name? Do you want to play?” This quote from the book is the first time Maria and Matt met. After the first day they met, Maria has always liked him and never forgotten about him. Maria
In the middle of the book, Matt encounters a situation that changes his life forever. He was stuck in a hospital room waiting for the doctors to take him in the operating room to do the heart transplant. With Celia’s help, he escapes from the hospital and El Patron. Celia had poisoned Matt so that El Parton wouldn’t steel his heart, “…enough to kill anyone already weak who tried to steal his
Although they are saying this in front of him, he stays positive. He entertains himself with the sawdust, and becomes friends with the bugs that start to live in the sawdust with him. He constantly thinks about Celia and Maria to stay happy and content with his new life.Matt stays positive by finding happiness in everything and not holding grudges. On page 147, Matt finds out that Rosa had been turned into an eejit because of the way she treated him. Instead of saying that she had it coming, he feels bad for her because she got the life sucked out of her body. Every time he got a horse, he would try to talk to her, to see if she would respond, but she never did. Finally, Matt made friends with people who believed him and believed that even though he was a clone, it didn’t matter, and this kept him
This can be seen when El Patrón keeps Matt like a normal boy so he can experience his youth through Matt. He thinks nothing of it when the decision was made, but El Patrón broke one of the only laws regarding clones. When a clone is born it is injected with something to make it go brain dead so it can be treated like an animal and with nobody to love it, can be used as a living set of spare parts. This is because clones have the same strengths and weaknesses as the person they are a clone of, they can use this to their advantage, as Matt did. Matt knew that el patron was greedy and thought he deserves the lives his siblings lost. Matt pieced together the clues he discovered and found why he was alive, the real reason, not the disguise. With the help of the people who loved him, which he would never have had if he was brain dead, he managed to escape, leaving El Patron to
In The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer states, "No one can tell the difference between a clone and a human. That's because there isn't any difference. The idea of clones being inferior is a lie." Members of the Alacrán household try to choose Matt's destiny before he is created and impose false allegations on him throughout his life. The belief that Matt is dangerous, a useless clone, and will become like El Patrón leaves him no room to create an identity of his own. In the House of the Scorpion, Matteo Alacrán is faced with the internal conflict of what his real identity is and the author interprets that he does not have his destiny chosen for him but he becomes his own person through his experiences.
The House of The Scorpion is a dark plot written by Nancy Farmer about a young boy named Matteo Alacrán. He lived in isolation with his caretaker, Celia who works for the highly compelling and affluent Alacrán family, of which El Patron is the head. El Patron is the drug lord ruler of the dystopian country, Opium. Later on in the story, Matt finds out he is the clone of El Patron and his life takes a turn for the worse. Through the characters of El Patron, the keepers, Tam Lin and Celia, Farmer shows us that those bestowed with power have the ability to use it however they please, for better or for worse.
The most reasonable idea that allows Mattie to be the protagonist is that she cared for a little girl named Nell even though she was struggling to care for herself. I predict that having Nell in the hands of Mattie, Grandfather dying, and Mother being gone made sense come to Mattie assuring her that caring for others as well as yourself alone is a huge responsibility. This quote shows Mattie’s thought after Grandfather’s death, “No, I could care for myself. I was not a child.” The two character traits that explains how Mattie matured is independent and a hero. She is independent because she was on her own for awhile and had to find food for herself and care for herself. This piece of evidence shows how she was alone with no one to feed or care for her, “I was alone; Grandfather was dead and Mother missing.” She had no one to count on but herself. Mattie being a hero shows a lot of her maturing. This is because she didn’t care for lots of things such as doing chores, but when things changed she realized that other people were in the need of her help like
Everyone needs friends who they can trust and rely on to always have their back. The House of the Scorpion is a dystopian fiction novel written by Nancy Farmer, is about a clone, named Matt, of the powerful drug lord, El Patron. When he is brought into a world ruled by El Patron, he is hated by everyone in the big house, except for a sweet girl named Maria, who lightens Matt’s day with just her presence, his bodyguard who becomes more like his father, and Celia, the woman who has taken care of Matt since he was made into a clone. He learns what it is like to live in a world full of social hierarchy and in his adventure he goes from the top to the bottom and everywhere in between. He is constantly being judged on who he is and is learning more about his identity, though mostly learns about love and loyalty . In this adventure of The House of the Scorpions, Matt finds that loyalty with friends is one of the most important things to have. Farmer shows many aspects that point to this theme.
In the book, Mattie starts out as a lazy teenager who needs to be told what to do by her over controlling mother, but throughout the story, she becomes more responsible and adult-like. For
When Matt is finally needed for organs, he manages a narrow escape with the help of Tam Lin, but the danger isn't left behind in Opium. Near death awaits him at the border of Aztlan, luckily Matt is able to hop the border, and land right in the arms of the Keepers. Conformity was the key to surviving with the lost boys, but Matt did not conform easily. Had he been ignorant to the ways of the world –like the other lost boys- Matt would've been like a sheep following a shepherd. However, Matt was not a sheep, he had seen more of the world than the orphans could dream of, and could not be easily brainwashed. In the end, Matt's individualism caused a lot of trouble, almost killing the frail Fidelito and himself. If Matt had compromised his integrity, nobody would've been hurt. On the other hand,
House Of The Scorpion Did you know that a Sheep was cloned in 1996? Well that in fact is true! In the House of the Scorpion, the same thing happened with a boy named Matt but, Matt is a human boy not a animal. El Patron is the most powerful Drug Lord in the world and Matt is his clone. El Patron is an Evil, Selfish old man who is at least 140 years old.
In the book, The House of the Scorpion, Matteo Alacran is a clone who is isolated from the rest of the world. Although he is a clone, Matt believes he is a human because he doesn’t know what clones are. In his isolation, he craves for human contact. When Steven, Emilia,