The House of the Scorpion

Fields of white opium poppies stretch away over the hills, and uniformed workers bend over the rows, harvesting. This is the empire of Matteo Alacran, a feudal drug lord in the country of Opium, which lies between the United States and Aztlan, formerly Mexico. Field work, or any menial tasks are done by "eejits," humans in whose brains computer chips have been installed to insure obedience. Alacran, or El Patron, has lived 140 years with the help of transplants from a series of clones, a common practice among rich men in this world. The intelligence of clones is usually destroyed at birth, but Matt, the latest of Alacran's doubles, has been spared. He grows up with Celia, the sergeant mother, first then with a mistake of speaking to the wrong people he ends up at the family's mansion, alternately caged and despised as an animal and then pampered and educated as El Patron's favorite when they find out that he’s his clone. Gradually he realizes the fate that is in store for him, and with the help of Tam Lin, his buff and kind Scottish bodyguard, he escapes to Aztlan. There he and other "lost children" are trapped in a more subtle kind of slavery before Matt can return to Opium to take his rightful place and transform his country.

As I was reading this book I kept picturing the different faces of these characters in my head.

This little boy reminded me of Matt in the beginning of the book, when he was very childish and innocent. He didn’t have a care in the world and he only waited for Celia to come home from work every day.

Cameron Diaz looked like a good Celia to me because in many of her movies she’s kind of a working type of women that knows how to take care of herself and a child. And she also seemed to have that sweet, very caring charisma that Celia has in the book.

Raquel Castro is another great

young actress that for sure seemed

like a Maria for this book!

She knows how to have a little bit

of an attitude like Maria in the

book and she knows how to get things her way!

Ricardo Montalban was the only face that I could picture being EL PATRON. He’s such a professional with everything and I’m pretty sure that if put up to the situation he could run his own business type country. He’s like so exact and powerful about things that he seemed like the best leader in this story.

Mark Wahlberg has to be the most perfect Tam Lin ever! He’s a big Scottish bouncer looking guy but you know that when it’s the appropriate time he’s a big cuddly caring bear! He’s awesome! He defiantly knows how to protect someone!

Salma Hayek reminded me of the mean nurse. Like I could imagine her being evil with a little boy and mistreating him like in the book because she’s a type of actress that can be anything!

Cloning

People mention the word cloning and many thoughts come to my head. The whole crazy bunch of people walking around looking like you thought first appears and then something about sheep, never anything about cloning people for organs. In The House of the Scorpion, cloning is the whole controversial topic of the book. I began wondering what cloning really was. Is there even an actual meaning to taking someone’s identity and manipulating it to something either better or worse? I thought that was crazy, but as I began to research cloning, I found incredible info about how that could be one of the things they would use cloning for. When I had Googled cloning many different controversial articles came up.

These are some of the websites you can go to learn more:

•http://www.globalchange.com/Cloning/

•http://www.religioustolerance.org/cloning.htm

•http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-science/genetics-molecular-medicine/related-policy-topics/stem-cell-research/human-cloning.shtml

And when I Google imaged cloning many different weird things came up of things that I didn’t even know existed or could exist in the future.

You can go to these links to actually see tests done on different animals in the present and maybe could be done in the future! :

•https:/.../lpy55/web%20Applications.html

Omg…this is the weirdest thing ever, but I saw this picture and did further research and found out that in Australia they have these models of clones, or what they would look like if we actually tried it. It’s so weird!!!

•http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/wearefamily/?sec=yf&pg=01

Review

Overall this book was really good. Especially if you like books that have topics you can argue about and involve some thought into it when read.