The House of the Scorpion
“Human” is defined narrowly in Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion. Farmer envisions a world in which creating clones from existing humans genetic code is a reality. Matteo Alacran (Matt) is one such clone; he just happens to be the clone of puissant opium lord El Patron. Although Matt is the clone of El Patron, he is continuously persecuted as a “creature” without a soul, even as “worse than an animal.”
As the marking (branding) on Matt’s foot suggests, he is considered to be nothing more than “Property of the Alacran Estate” (or to put it another way: the organ replacement for El Patron). Matt is seen as not worthy of telling the truths to about himself, until his bodyguard Tam Lin tells him the dirty little secret, “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 filthy lie.” Farmer’s whole book is constructed to get us thinking about truth and lies, human and non-human, regress and progress, right and wrong.
Even in creating an alternative world, speculative fiction/fantasy speaks to issues in our world. Farmer creates a future world that is both exceedingly strange and familiar. The evil empire called Opium is tucked in between the U.S. and Aztlan (formerly Mexico). El Patron’s drug kingdom is farmed by “eejits,” who Matt is horrified to discover are brain-dead clones. The eejits live hopeless, choiceless lives. Farmer’s construction of the eejits forces readers to value their power to choose—whether it be small choices such as whether or not to take a drink of water or whether it be larger choices such as what to do with our lives. While each one of us sometimes makes wrong choices, a key idea of the book seems to be that the ability to choose for ourselves is essential to feeling “wholly” human.
Even though Matt has not had his brain deadened (due to his position as a favorite of El Patron), he feels empathy with his fellow clones. This very human emotion of empathy enables him to have the courage and resolve to help change the situation. Partly because he is El Patron’s clone and partly because he is discovering who he is as a unique individual with the ability to choose what to make of his life, Matt has an indomitable will to survive. Through the course of the story Matt faces much opposition, first from the evil, conspiring Alacran family on the estate and then in Aztlan where he is captured and taken to a base orphanage after he flees the estate following El Patron’s death.
At the close of the book, he escapes the orphanage and returns at last to his inheritance, the Alacran estate, with plans to…well, I won’t spoil the end for you. I’ll just say that the end is not without hope for humanity. Farmer’s original, fast-paced tale is lined throughout with questions about genetics, ethics, and politics and its premise could be used to engender many classroom and/or bookgroup discussions.
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Macy’s perfect world is shattered forever when her special bond with her father is broken by his death—a death she blames partially on herself. Since his death, the joy has seeped out of Macy’s life. She has stopped running (running being one activity she and her father always did together), her boyfriend has left town for brain camp, and she feels isolated from her mother and sister. In her attempt to stop her downward spiral and try something new, she takes a part time job catering with Wish catering. Through working for Wish, she begins to make new friends (including an attractive, artistic coworker named Wes) and to feel hopeful about finding joy in life again.
