In the House of the Scorpion, there are a lot of Man vs. Society issues due to lack of respect for others. For example the main character Matt, is not very well respected because he is a clone. Some even tried to avoid him as much as they can, even though he is the clone of El Patron. Within the novella, Matt face many Man vs. Society because he is “different from everyone else, at least that is what Maria thinks”, even though he has every human qualities and attributes. Matt did not just face Man vs. Society, he faced many conflict like himself, people treated Matt differently, starting when he was at a young age, as time progressed, and he starts to lose sight of himself and what he truly is capable of as a person/clone. But in the end, Matt finally overcome those difficulties because he had a new perception of things and a new perception of the new world when he travel to Aztland (Mexico).
The main protagonist in the House of the Scorpion, Matt, has a tattoo or a human stamp, stamped to his foot. It states “Property of Alcaran” which meant, he belong to someone. This is symbol, symbolized dehumanizing because that is subjecting someone to be different from others in a bad way. In the novella, Emilia, her younger sister Maria, and Steven visited (more like disturbed) Matt at the little house in the poppy field and try to talk to him. He can’t play with them as he is locked in the house, but tries to communicate with them. Steven and Emilia give up and leave Maria behind at Matt’s house. Matt becomes frustrated and breaks the window and asks Maria if she wants to play, drawing the attention of Steven and Emilia. Matt jumps out of the window, lands on the glass, is severely injured and passes out. The children bring him back to a large mansion. The maids begin to treat Matt. A tattoo is discovered on his foot: “Property of the Alcaran Estate.” Mr. Alcaran is furious, treats him like an animal, and tosses the injured Matt onto the front lawn just because he was a clone.
The House of the Scorpion represents or resembles a dystopian novel in many ways that are surprising and relevant to the real world. Some characteristics in the House of the Scorpion such as corporate control, dehumanization/intellectual repression, social stratification, eugenics, and surveillance state are shown throughout the novel. The three most significant characteristics of the story are corporate control, dehumanization/intellectual repression, and eugenics. These big ideas tie in together in the House of the Scorpion thus making it a dystopian novel. Corporate control is shown in this novella because there is one large corporation that controls the whole country, in this case it would be El Patron the Lord of Opium who is controlling people through drugs, money, and his powerful relation. In this story, the main character Matt, who is a clone of El Patron is a perfect example of dehumanization/intellectual repression because in the novella, there is a belief that clones are monsters and should not be treated equal to a human and with that they treated Matt he was not a human being when he actually had every attributes of a human being. This is an example of dehumanization because characters in the story keeps making Matt feels less of himself, to the point where he could lost the true meaning of his identity. WHAT OTHER SAY ABOUT HIM: El Patron is very charismatic, or charming, so he can manipulate people with his power. It is El Patron’s power that enthralls, or traps, Tam Lin, who tells our young hero, Matt, that "El Patron 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." (Farmer, 24, 25). Some say El Patron is like a cat with nine lives, some say he is “[t]he old vampire, who have managed to crawl out of his coffin again and again” (Framer, 99) because he can afford to break the law and get operations like heart and brain transplant from clones. Narrator’s description about physical traits and personality: imagine a man who have lived over 140 years, imagine what he did looked like… El Patron is an exact representative of that because he is“extremely thin, with shoulder-length white hair neatly combed beside a face so seamed and wrinkled” (Framer 54) it seems so unreal to anyone that had seen him. Even Matt, “who saw that what he did taken as an empty armchair actually contained a man” (Farmer, 54) due to the fact that El Patron was so reedy he looked like he was part of the armchair he was sitting on. Character’s own speech & thoughts: El Patron is full of confident but he is self-centered and is an egomaniac. Throughout his life, El Patron had said many times that “I outlived all my enemies. Of course I can always make more enemies […] you could say I’m a cat with nine lives. As long as there’s mice to catch, I intend to keep hunting” , (Framer 101) sometime he is so determined to outlived people and is always thinking about himself, he forgets about the moral of giving back. His ego has taken over him, he said “You can tell how much someone loves you by the size of the present, [...] and he preferred to receive gift, rather than give them.” El Patron has a philosophy that “the flow of wealth should be from outside-in” which make him self-centered and wicked in many ways. |