Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The House of the Scorpion, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Free Will vs. Predetermination
Scientific Ethics and Abuse
Language, Law, and Dehumanization
Abuse of Power and Corruption
Summary
Analysis
Matt lies strapped to a hospital bed, surrounded by guards. He is terrified because he knows what happened to MacGregor’s clone will soon happen to him. He wishes he had escaped to the mountains. Matt struggles against his straps as the doctor comes in and runs tests on him. Matt tries to run when they untie him to go to the bathroom, but the guards stop him. The doctors wonder over Matt’s strange test results but decide to go ahead with the transplants anyway.
Matt’s straps show how he has been completely robbed of his free will. The doctors, who ignore his suffering and speak about him as if he isn’t present, represent an unethical scientific establishment which ignores the human suffering it causes. The strange test results hint at the possibility that there might be issues with the transplant.
Themes
Matt wonders where María is. He assumes the family must have drugged her and will continue to drug her until she marries Tom. He knows he cannot help María now, but he hopes Esperanza, being the headstrong woman who wrote A History of Opium, might be able to save her daughter.
Matt believes he helped María by telling her about her mother, showing that even in the most restrictive of societies, one can help someone else by exercising their free will and defying societal rules.
Themes
Bodyguards untie Matt and take him to the next room, which is lavishly decorated. Celia and a pack of bodyguards are gathered there. El Patrón lies in a hospital bed in the room. He calls Matt “mi vida” and offers him cookies. Matt refuses to speak to him. El Patrón says his clones always behave like this at the end of their lives, because they forget the years of good treatment he has given them. He says that he gave Matt the childhood he never had in his impoverished village. He recounts the entire story of his childhood again to Matt. Off in the distance, Matt hears a dove calling, sounding like “no hope.”
El Patrón’s use of the nickname, “mi vida” (meaning “my life” in Spanish) shows how he views Matt as a means to extend his own life. El Patrón’s recollection about past clones show how Matt is not special, as he once thought, and how El Patrón is characteristically entitled and selfish, believing all his clones owe him their lives because he was kind to them. The call of the dove references Matt’s hopelessness in the face of his destiny.
Themes
El Patrón, deviating from his usual story, argues that since all his siblings died young, he is owed their lifetimes. Celia speaks up and says El Patrón has already taken thousands of lives, in the eejits out in the field. El Patrón says the eejits are the same as cattle, and he caught them running both toward and away from the United States. Celia says El Viejo was the only decent member of the family because he died at the natural time. El Patrón calls El Viejo a fool.
El Patrón justification for killing clones is seemingly based on his sense of entitlement, since he believes his siblings’ lives are essentially owed to him like possessions. Celia shows she has a far stronger sense of justice than El Patrón, and that she is incredibly brave, because she is the only character to ever confront El Patrón for his crimes of killing eejits.
Themes
Get the entire The House of the Scorpion LitChart as a printable PDF.
The doctor comes in and announces that the operation is ready to begin. El Patrón tells Matt that he made Matt just like God made Adam. According to El Patrón, Matt owes him because without the old man, Matt would have never enjoyed nature or music. Celia says that Matt doesn’t owe him anything and he won’t be donating his organs. Celia says she’s been feeding Matt poison. She explains that she has been sneaking arsenic to Matt, just enough to make him unfit to donate organs without killing him.
El Patrón’s comparison to God and Adam emphasizes how he sees himself as a deity who can do whatever he wants to others because they are all beneath him. His entitlement is shown in the assumption that Matt owes him just because he created him. Celia proves his assumption wrong by exercising her own free will to save Matt, finally revealing her plan of poisoning him in order to keep him safe.
Themes
El Patrón screams at Celia. He becomes so worked up the doctors rush him to the operating room. Bodyguards take Celia away, leaving Matt alone in the room with a guard outside the door. The day passes as he waits. He wonders how deadly the arsenic within him is, if he has the power to kill something with it. Instead, he decides to think about María and what she told him about getting in trouble for sunbathing naked on the roof of her convent.
Matt’s thoughts about using poison to kill someone shows him relating to El Patrón’s cruelty. But Matt proves he is different from El Patrón—choosing to think about something positive, his relationship with María, shows that he still maintains the free will to diverge from the bad side he supposedly inherited from El Patrón.
Themes
Tam Lin and Mr. Alacrán enter the room. Matt thinks about the time he first entered the Big House and Mr. Alacrán threw him out onto the lawn. Now, Mr. Alacrán tells Matt the family no longer needs him. Matt knows this means El Patrón is dead. Despite himself, he starts to cry. Mr. Alacrán orders Tam Lin to euthanize Matt. Matt argues, saying El Patrón educated him so that he could help govern Opium. Tam Lin tells him El Patrón had seven other clones who were also educated.
Matt’s tears show how the bond between him and El Patrón still holds power over him, even after he wishes to separate himself. Mr. Alacrán’s order for Matt to be killed shows how he believes that Matt must either fulfill his destiny of donating organs, or he must die, because he believes his life has no purpose beyond his predetermined function as a donor.
Themes
Matt becomes enraged that his friend, Tam Lin, is betraying him. Tam Lin hits him and then says that he now works for Mr. Alacrán as a mercenary. He tells Matt that Celia has been turned into an eejit. Matt realizes Tam Lin has led both Matt and Celia into a trap. Mr. Alacrán tells Tam Lin to get rid of Matt and that he will see him later at the wake.
Tam Lin’s betrayal here is especially devastating to Matt because he encouraged Matt to exercise his free will and constantly affirmed Matt’s worth as a human. His betrayal, then, suggests the opposite of what he has taught Matt all along: that an immoral person will always be immoral, without hope of change.
Themes
