7/29/2023 0 Comments House of the scorpion barcodeAlacrán calls doctors to take him to emergency surgery, and after El Patrón dies, he orders Tam Lin to dispose of Matt. The resulting rage of El Patrón causes him to have a fatal heart attack. At that moment, Celia reveals that she has been giving Matt doses of arsenic, which were not large enough to kill Matt but would be deadly to one as frail as El Patrón. María is taken back to the convent in which she studies, and Matt is taken to the hospital, where El Patrón finally confirms that Matt was created only as an organ donor to keep him alive. Matt and María attempt to flee in the ensuing chaos but are betrayed by the newlyweds. In denial, he convinces himself that El Patrón would not hire tutors for him and keep him entertained if he wanted to kill him and that instead, he must be wanted to run the country when El Patrón dies.Īt Steven and Emilia's wedding, El Patrón has a nearly-fatal heart attack. Matt also discovers that all clones are supposed to be injected when "harvested" (born) with a compound that cripples their brains and turns them into little more than thrashing, drooling animals meant to donate organs. Matt is kept in the dark about his identity, however, until a cruel joke reveals to him that he is a clone. Matt is also given a bodyguard, Tam Lin, a reformed terrorist who becomes a father figure to Matt.ĭuring the seven years that Matt lives in the house, he befriends María, which gradually blossoms into romance. When he finds out, El Patrón is furious and gives Matt clothes and his own room and commands everyone to treat him with respect. Alacrán, El Patrón's great-grandson, recognizes him as a clone, which results in a few months of him being locked in a room and treated like an animal. Unaware of the danger of jumping barefoot onto smashed glass, he has to be carried to El Patrón's mansion to be treated for his injuries. When he is discovered by three children, Emilia, Steven, and Maria, he smashes a window and jumps out of the house. For the first six years of his life, he lives in a small house on the edge of the poppy fields with Celia, a cook working in El Patrón's mansion. The protagonist, Matt, is a clone of El Patrón. Opium consists of several drug-producing Farms, the Alacrán estate (which produces opium poppies) being the largest and where some of the Alacrán family stay. This story is set in the country of Opium, a narrow strip of land between Mexico (now called Aztlán), and the United States, which is ruled by the original Matteo Alacrán, or El Patrón, an incredibly powerful drug lord, who is over 140 years old. įarmer based many of the novel's characters on figures from her life, both in childhood and present day. įarmer chose the scorpion symbol because El Patrón, a main character in the novel, is from the Mexican state of Durango. Also on her website, Farmer notes that swear words were removed from the manuscript before publication, and that she wished the novel were 50 pages longer. On her personal website, Farmer says she wrote the novel for her son, who is dyslexic. The novel is partly inspired by Farmer's experience of rescuing a Mexican immigrant from dying in the desert, as is evidenced in the theme of illegal immigration. The idea was originally from a short story that Farmer wrote for an anthology, which she withdrew and then expanded after realizing it was too closely tied to her own life. It is a story about the struggle to survive as a free individual and the search for a personal identity. The main character Matteo Alacrán, or Matt, is a young clone of a drug lord of the same name, usually called "El Patrón". It is set in the future and mostly takes place in Opium, a country which separates Aztlán (formerly Mexico) and the United States. The House of the Scorpion is a 2002 science fiction young adult novel by Nancy Farmer.
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