Response to The House of the Scorpion

This book is a very interesting look at a possible future of North America and also deals with intriguing issues of cloning, power, and prejudice. On the whole, I enjoyed this book, and I definitely think that certain students who are into this genre would really like the book.
In the first chapter, we are shown that cloning is going on and that the “Matteo Alacran” is always left intact, not given the shot that would blunt its intelligence. I found this fascinating. Whenever I have heard about cloning or read about it in the newspaper or something, I just thought that there was a clone and they grew up as a clone and that was that. I never considered the possibility that a clone would deliberately be given blunted intelligence. It seems so cruel and inhumane. Though, I suppose it has to be considered what the point of the clone is. For many, I imagine, it has to do with medical treatment and getting new organs and things like that, as it does in this book. So it does make a certain amount of sense to make the clone unaware of their existence if their sole purpose is to be cut up someday. Still, it’s not any easier to think about.
The power that is shown in the book is amazing to me. El Patron holds absolute power over just about everything, but the most shocking is the power to take a person’s life away, but not kill them, make them an eejit. This is incomprehensible to me. That a person actually has the ability to take another person and implant something in their brain that really makes them no better than a robot is horrific. Although, the more I thought about it, the less surprised I was at the act itself as the fact that it was allowed to go on. Surely other countries knew this was going on, so did they simply turn a blind eye because it was in their best interest? Did nobody care about these people? Were they being bribed? If this is the type of society we’re moving towards, I hope I’m dead before it happens.
The way that the clones were treated was very surprising to me. Immediately upon being discovered, Matt is characterized by other people as dirty and inhuman. I guess I thought there would be a little more understanding, since it’s not his fault he’s a clone. Though I do think it’s a very interesting portrayal of prejudice in general. Americans had the same reactions to slaves long ago, and even the holocaust or apartheid is still carrying out the idea that one person is better than another person for no real reason. Of course it all stems from insecurity, and I thought the scene when Tam Lin explains to Matt that clones are really no different than anyone else, that they are fully human, was very powerful. It was like Tam Lin was speaking to everyone who has ever held such ideas about another person.
Though I enjoyed this book and think it does a lot of great things, I do have to make one critical comment, and that is that I thought the movement of the book was a little slow, especially in the explanation of how the world got to where it is. I actually got to a point where I was bored with the situation of the world and not knowing how it came about. When it finally did come up in the book Matt finds, it made everything that happened that much more interesting. Similarly, when Matt escapes and becomes a Lost Boy, I thought that whole process was a little slow with some unnecessary filler. It lost some excitement and tension, and had it been cut down a little, that tension would have remained.