The House of the Scorpion Themes

No one likes it when someone copies them, or wears the same outfit, or has the same shoes. We all want to have our own identity, our own sense of self, right? Okay, so imagine, then, that you are a...

The classic hero tale always features heroes who have to make tough decisions, and The House of the Scorpion is no different. Just as Frodo decides to take the one ring to Mount Doom rather than tr...

In the world of The House of the Scorpion, one man has all the power. And that man is El Patrón. Literally everyone in Opium is at the mercy of his will. Though El Patrón may have the power, othe...

There are some nasty people in The House of the Scorpion. We're thinking of El Patrón, of course, but also of Tom, the Keepers, and plenty of others, too. None of these people are very nice to Mat...

Ever spent some time alone at home and been spooked by weird noises? Multiply that by a thousand, and you'll get what Matt goes through when he's imprisoned at age seven by the possibly deranged, c...

In The House of the Scorpion, everyone but Matt seems to be in on a secret. Even when that secret is revealed to Matt, he's still in the dark about a lot of other things, and he remains in the dark...

Well, The House of the Scorpion definitely falls in the science fiction genre, so it's no surprise that science plays a major role. But this book isn't about lab work and discoveries. Instead, Farm...

Slavery abounds in The House of the Scorpion. The brainwashed and trapped Eejits are the most obvious example of enslavement, but pretty much everyone in El Patrón's household is a slave in some f...

In The House of the Scorpion, no one is more obsessed with death than El Patrón. Let's be honest: he terrified of it, so he uses clones to avoid it altogether. We could have told El Patrón that l...