In ‘The House of the Scorpion’ (THS), Nancy Farmer utilises a variety of themes, language features and even characters to direct her message to the reader. The theme of humanity is mentioned several times and introduced in a way that gets the audience thinking. The perspective of clones is also a topic which is portrayed in multiple ways through different characters. The final and most argued theme in this novel are the ‘ethics of cloning’. These three main themes give the story a deeper meaning. They also allow the reader to dive in and explore these ideas in an immersive manner.
The definition of humanity is portrayed by Farmer in multiple ways through the numerous characters in the novel. The predominance of the Alacrans’ look at humanity is similar to a hierarchy. They have the belief that those with power deserve to be acknowledged and those below are mere ‘tools’ to be used. We learn that “They work without resting…they don’t drink water until someone tell[s] them to.” (pg. 82). This indicates that the eejits are treated harshly without being given any rights. We also know that most of the eejits are made from illegal immigrants and those who disobey. The scorpion is used several times throughout the novel to symbolise strength, authority and even evil. Contradictory to this is the Virgin Statue which symbolises “…all gentle things” (pg. 60). This symbol opposes a hierarchy and rather focuses on equality and love among all people. Celia is always singing songs of the
In the story, “The House of the Scorpion” were so many amazing cliff hangers. That made you want to read more and more. The overall main character was a boy named Matt. When being introduced to the story Matt was six years of age. He lived in a small house out in the middle of a poppy field, In a country called Opium. But there's a catch, Matt isnt a real boy. He’s a clone and was created in a lab and given birth by a cow. Throughout his life he wasn't treated very nice for being a clone. Eventually things start to look up for him and end’s up being the new leader of Opium.
In Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion, Matteo Alacran, a clone, discovers that everybody is different. To start with, Matt is El Patron’s clone. El Patron is 143 years old. In this book, a piece of land between Mexico and the United States is called Dreamland or Opium, and is owned by El Patron, and the Alacran family.
The rulers of Equality 7-2521's society seek to discourage even the realization of individuality; they attempt to do an “ant colony" mentality in which the human beings show the self-sacrificial existence of insects serving the overall good of the whole. There is the queen (rulers in the book’s case), then there are the worker ants
Summarize- In the book The House of the Scorpion the author Nancy Farmer tells the story of a young clone boy and the struggles and events throughout his life. In the beginning of the book one of the main things that happens is when it tells the story of how Matt’s embryo was injected into a cow to be born. Later in the book it shows how Matt, now grown up, is locked in his house all his life and one day some kids see him so he jumps out the window and cuts his feet badly for the first time. The kids take him back to their house and then find out he’s a clone so a woman named Rosa locks him in a room with sawdust. One of the kids, Maria, does not care Matt is a clone and she visits him while he’s locked up but is then kicked out of the house for this reason. Months later, he is found by his original caretaker and told that he will soon be
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
In the novel House of the Scorpions by Nancy Farmer, the memoir, Where Am I Wearing by Kelsey Timmerman, and the short story The Scholarship Jacket by Martha Salinas, the common theme is that a person is always a person, no matter their wealth, their skin color, or even their birth circumstances. In the House of the Scorpions, an instance that shows this is when Matt finally listens to what all of his friends have been telling him, about how he is not inferior to them. Another example that accentuates the theme from Where Am I Wearing is where the reader learns about the terrible conditions Bangladeshi workers have to suffer through. A final example of the theme in The Scholarship Jacket is when Martha is denied the jacket because she’s poor and Mexican. A common theme similarly found in The House of the Scorpions by Nancy Farmer, The Scholarship Jacket by Martha Salinas, and Where Am I Wearing by Kelsey Timmerman is that everyone is human, no matter their financial status, ethnicity, not to mention circumstances of birth, and all deserve to be treated the same.
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.
ve you ever got treated badly because you are different? Matt did in the book, The House of the Scorpion, written by Nancy Farmer. He got treated badly because he a clone. This book is about using livestock to clone human beings. It describes the behavior and relationship between human beings when they are born through normal way versus clones. The theme I think best is people treat others with disrespect just because they are different. The first evidence from the book is when Rosa mistreats Matt because she found out that he was a clone. The second evidence is that Steven, Emilia and Benito are unfriendly to Matt because he was a clone. The third evidence that support my theme is that Mr. Alacran and Felicia treats Matt very bad because
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.", says Martin Luther King Jr. Truer words have never been spoken, for when ignorance is bliss, there is a steep price to pay. In The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer creates a character named Matteo Alacrán, and for the first half of the book, he is ignorance personified. When Matt learns the truth about his identity, his bubble of bliss is shattered, but perhaps it was for his own good. The great poet Thomas Gray writes, "Where ignorance is bliss, / Tis' folly to be wise." Yes, ignorance is bliss, but it is just as much of a "folly" as wisdom.
In the story “House Of The Scorpion”, written by Nancy Farmers, the main character of the story is Matteo (Matt) Alacran. The main setting of the story takes place in the country of Opium. In the beginning of the story, it describes a man named Eduardo who delivers a baby Matt from birth from a cow. There were thirty six split cells of life in the beginning, but only Matt was the droplet that lived. The main conflict of the story is Matt himself; he is a clone of the one of the most powerful drug dealers, El Patron. Besides only a few characters of the story, everyone despises him and is disgusted being close to him as well because he is a clone, whose status is lower than a cockroach. Due to being a clone, the reason he is alive and not turned into an eejit (people with computer chips in their brains and acts like zombies), is to be used as spare body parts for El patron when his organs stop working. The solution is that El Patron is dead and all of his successors are too. At the end of the story, Matt becomes the new lord of opium.
In the poem “Choices” by Allen Steble and the book Scorpions by Walter Dean Myers a common theme was presented. Throughout the poem “Choices”, it was explaining that everyone was a choice in life to do what they want. In the book Scorpions, Jamal is a twelve year old boy growing up in Harlem, his brother is in jail for murder, everywhere Jamal goes he seems to get into some sort of trouble. He is bullied at school by a bigger boy, labeled by his teacher as trouble maker and his brother tells his gang that Jamal needs to be the leader of the Scorpion gang. Jamal and his best friend Tito are later found in a dangerous situation. The theme of “Choices” and Scorpions are related. A common theme between these two is making decisions.
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.
The film GATTACA and the short story, “Nine Lives,” exemplifies the ethics of altering human life at the genetic level, through techniques of genetic engineering. Throughout GATTACA, the ability to create improved, even superior forms of human life as a positive development through eugenics is shown as well as arousing questions about the moral implications of such engineering. The main protagonist in GATTACA, Vincent Freeman, battles with the discrimination of being an “invalid” in a world of “valids” and comes to realize that he is not an inferior being in the midst of an altered humanity. In “Nine Lives,” a lone survivor of the ten genetically engineered clones of John Chow struggle come to understand itself in relation to unaltered humanity and its individuality for the first time in its life. A dystopian society is produced when unaltered humans and genetically engineered beings coexist and interact with one another due to nefarious social practices such filtering menial jobs only to “invalids” in GATTACA and the emphasis in the value of clones and their worth to society as collective work group rather than focusing on each individual’s contribution to society. The film GATTACA exhibits the adverse nature of eugenics while “Nine Lives” stresses the importance of individualism instead of collectivism and fend off the need to be reliant on others to feel welcomed in society.
Many ethical and moral dilemmas arise when discussing human cloning, and one can have many positions for and against each. To understand the issues surrounding human cloning, one must have a basic
As the advancement of time, the concept of human cloning can become a reality as with the breakthrough of biotechnology. Human cloning can be defined in terms of formation of genetically same imprint of an individual. The child who produced from this process is a new category of human being that is a clone of a person who cloned himself. Many people think that it is not right to cloned human beings. People argued that it is wrong to create identical human being, and this argument is dismissed by stating various other arguments in the favor of human cloning such as there is nothing wrong if monozygotic twins exist, and clone is not the identical copy of the original human being even in those situations where clone is exact genetic copy because those clones are developed in a completely different environment. In this paper, I will discuss the life in shadow argument as well as arguments opponent to it. In addition, I will discuss the ethical considerations of human reproductive cloning regarding this