The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

1078 Words3 Pages

“You are Ugly!” “Go Away” “Nobody Likes You” “Go Die!” Things like this are said to people everyday just because they might be different. As you can tell our society is not the most accepting. “The House of The Scorpion” accurately reflects this. It shows how people are discriminated for being different, how money influences and corrupts people and how power corrupts people.

Everyday people get discriminated for being different. Such as in “The House of The Scorpion” Matteo Alacrán the main character is repeatedly discriminated for being a clone. Matt is a clone for a drug lord named El Patrón. El Patrón is 148 years old and he uses clones to extend his life by using their organs. Matt was one of those clones used to enhance El Patrón’s life. Instead of immediately using Matt as an "organ donor" he decided to give Matt a childhood and let him grow up like a normal boy. There was only one problem with this, a clone had never really had a life they were only used as "organ donors". So Matt was the first ever clone to be raised like a human and obviously this started some controversy. When Matt was first brought to the Big House nobody talked to him and avoided him like he was a creature. One maid named Rosa particularly treated Matt as a creature by making him stay in an isolated room and use sawdust as his "litter". Everyone was disgusted by Matt so much that they all relocate to different wings of the house. Everyone is disgusted and hates Matt except for the lady who raised him Celia and a little girl named Maria. After El Patrón figured out about Matt being abused he punished Rosa and gives Matt his own room and such. This made people despise him even more because he was a clone and he was being treated like El Patrón...

... middle of paper ...

...eason Tamlin fled the country and became a mercenary, mercenaries are people that take part in armed combat for a private gain. Tamlin became a mercenary because he didn’t really have another choice, and he became a mercenary for El Patrón because of El Patrón’s very evident power. Tamlin also wanted some power so he went to work for El Patrón he said "El Patrón had an instinct for people he could enslave [...] He was such a powerful presence. Power's a strange thing, lad. It's a drug and people like me crave it."

Society in “The House of The Scorpion” and our own society is strikingly similar in many ways. Some of these ways include how in both societies people get discriminated, money influences and corrupts people and also how power corrupts people. However our society just like a person’s personality, has the potential to change itself and become different.

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