El Patrón, A Cat with Nine Lives?

El Patrón has lived so long with all of the clones he has killed for organs and other parts, but why doesn't anyone do anything about it? and why is this the first time someone has done something to save one of the clones?
I think that one major thing that influenced people to not speak up for Matt is that they might be afraid of El Patrón, because he is a drug lord and has some very dark secrets inside of him. I think I would be afraid of him too, because you aren't sure what he could do to you, let alone the bodyguard army he has.
You know the people are afraid of him because every time he walks into a room with the others they immediately give him the center of attention, because he likes the attention, since he is simply obsessed with himself. Another way was that when El Patrón was in the same place as Matt, the people treat Matt with respect, mostly out of fear of El Patrón, because he wanted Matt to be treated like himself. When Matt is alone the people ignore him, and in Rosa's case she treats him brutally, until she has to show him to El Patrón. Plus one more thing is that no one has ever spoke against El Patrón or did anything to truly upset him except when Rosa jailed him in that room (Which led to some terrible consequences).
I think those overall is some of the major points that determined why no other clones were saved from El Patrón, but I think overall Matt might have had some difference from the others... Matt in this had Celia in the beginning, so I think that the other clones might have had all their time in the big house and no one made friends with him or was like a mother to Matt, so no one cared and they all treated them like when Matt was in the big house. Celia had time to bond with Matt in a way so that she actually loved him and cared for him, the other clones probably didn't they might have just had their "Love" from El Patrón, which they thought was great, just like Matt. Even though Celia didn't want to be considered a mother to Matt, she still acted like one, doing everything a mother does, sort of like a mother cat to a kitten. Because in the end Celia did save Matt, even if she poisoned him, but it was for his own good...

One thing is for sure, El Patrón was never ment to have the nine lives... and he never got them all!

Illegal Immigration: How Celia ended up here...

www.usimmigrationsupport.org/illegal-immigration-from-mexico.html

Illegal immigration in The House of the Scorpion is done by "coyotes," people who know the way to illegally immigrate from one place to another, like in Celia's case it was from Aztlán to try to cross the border to the US. I think in the modern world there are Coyotes, they lead people from Mexico to the US, and plus there are problems all over the world, and bring people using ships, and other forms of transportation. There are also many forms of border guards/the farm patrol, but in real life we have human rights and other things that prevents them from turning people into weird robot slaves that are called Eejits in the book. In real life you could also face very bad consequences for illegally immigrating to another country, and in this article up here it talks about how there are many people leading others from Mexico and other places into the US, and the people can face heavy fines and long jail time. I think this book can be related to real life really easily and is very connected to real world issues.

The Twisted Branches have Returned

When I was reading the book, I never expected El Patron to be that bad. When Matt and Tam Lin were at the oasis, Tam Lin said that El Patron had many twisted branches.  But I never knew that it was that bad. El Patron raised Matt for only one reason, to harvest his organs when they are strong. There is no limit for El Patrons selfishness it seems. He gave Matt 14 years of a good life hoping that in return Matt would give El Parton his heart, literally. It would of been so if Celia hadn't interfered and hadn't been poisoning Matt for his whole life just enough to not kill him or seriously hurt him but enough to kill El Patron at his very old age. 

Blog Post 2: Setting; Death or Adventure?

 The big house. The big house is the place where El Patron has his mansion and his work. Everyone in the big house is either in El Patrons family, or are part of his "property." Everyone else are eejits except for the Clone, Matt. Everyone in the big house is discussed by Matt except for Tam Lin, Celia, El Patron and Maria. The Big House is in Opium which is a country between Aztlan and America. It is a opium producing state and the Big House has eejits working for it which harvest opium. The Big House has many passages which are used to spy on people. Later Matt discovered this secret passage and also spied on what people in the Big House to see what they were up to. Under El Patrons property there is a huge storage room with all of El Patrons treasures where he wants to be buried. Matt fears the house at first, especially the people but later on he starts to explore it and finds many things about the House. He can spy on almost anyone from the secret passage. This is how he sees Stevens and Emilia's wedding. Outside if the house there are huge opium fields that stretch on for many kilometres. This is where the eeijst harvest all of the opium. This is the stuff the Felicia is always high off of. All of the people in this house are the property of El Patron who is a 143 year old, am in a wheel-chair. And now he is about to die so he asks for Matt's heart to replace his in exchange for the life he allowed Matt to live. But Celia refuses and tells El Patron that she had been poisoning Matt, not enough to kill him but enough to kill the weak El Patron and so El Patron gets very angry. So angry that he has another fatal heart attack and dies.The reason the Celia does this, poisoning Matt, is because she actually loves Matt. Unlike most of the other servants in the big house she loves and adores Matt and is his mother image. Tam Lin is his father image. Everyone else in the house hates him like Emilia, Tom, Steven and everyone else that lives in the big house. 

Opium: What is it? Country or Drug?

Opium, the country in the middle of the United States, and what is now Aztlan and was Mexico. I think Opium as a setting is like sort of a lawless place, and is sort of futuristic, in it's own way. It sort of tells how drug dealers took over the border, maybe with no where else to go, because no country wants drug dealers. Opium is practically used for drug production, and they don't do anything else in it, I think Opium is sort of representing a kind of Anarchy or Dictatorship government, and the name also implies what kind it is as these two types, because usually drug dealers just take over or just leave it alone, and if no one takes over its a Anarchy, and if they do they boss people around. I think this kind of place happens in kinds of books where it describes the world after a major event happened, like a apocalypse or a huge war. After these wars there are the criminals which weren't really involved so they built these areas where the government wasn't really controlling since they were focused on other things, so its like a reform. The government also took some of this to their advantage by using Opium as a border control against illegal immigration, and this probably solved one of their problems, and they constructed a deal where they won't sell drugs to the US or Aztlan which was pretty useful also. Opium can also relate to Aztlan where they reformed, but Opium was created, but Aztlan is now different, and they have opposite meanings, Opium was a good place and now it has become a drug area, and Mexico used to be bad, but now it reformed into a more structured society. Overall I think the setting is like sort of a place that raised during a big world event, where there is no law, and humans are just reforming from that disaster.

Blog Post 1; Matt's feelings about the other children

He feels anger, he feels regret and he wants to be loved, but how how is this all possible when he is just a clone? At first he thinks that they are friendly and he wants to play with them. When they accept, he jumps out the window and hurts himself. This is why they take him back to the big house. When he is being treated with all of the glass getting taken out of his foot, they notice the numbers on his foot, the figure out that he is a clone. All of them suddenly hate Matt, except for the little girl, María. I personally think that Matt has feelings for María, since he always gets very lonely without her and was begging her not to leave him when she went to school. But Tom and Emilia despise Matt. They call him a dirty, filthy animal that doesn't deserve to live. Just because he is a clone. But why do they hate clones? I think that they hate clones because most clones aren't smart enough to be human and act like animals. I'm guessing that this is because the people they were cloned off of weren't very bright. But Matt was cloned from El Patrón, on of the brightest people, this is why he is so smart and so different from all of the other clones. Emilia and Tom, and the rest of the town think that Matt is the same like all of the other clones, but he is not. Matt knows what the others think of him and he doesn't like it very much.

He gets very angry when somebody calls him a filthy clone or other variations of that. Rosa was probably the meanest to him. She hates clones apparently more than anyone else. Matt doesn't just dislike Rosa, he is afraid of her. When El Patrón comes, he tells everyone to be nice and respect Tom, everyone agrees but they still dislike him very much. Matt has proven himself that he is as smart or even smarter than any other kids of his year. Still they think that he is a dumb animal and soon Matt doesn't care anymore what they think. When somebody doesn't trust him with a task, even María, he gets mad and thinks that they didn't let him do it just because he is a clone. And once, when he wasn't trusted with a task, he even told María that he is a filthy animal. María tries to be nice to Matt. When he calls himself that, she protests and says that he is just selfish. When El Patrón first came, Matt was studying the crowd and he spotted  María, holding Toms hand. This made Matt furious. He hated Tom. Tom had shot him with a pea shooter leaving many bruises. Tom tried to do everything to make Matt's life even worse. When he saw this scene, he became furious with María for being friends with Tom. He thought to himself, "How could she be friends with him?" This describes the relationship between Tom and the other children in the big house.

María's feelings on Matt: Empathy or Love?

María is struggling to understand why people hate Matt so much, to her he seems like any other kid, there isn't any difference... María is the youngest daughter of Senator Mendoza, who is a politician in the US. She also has a older sister named Emilia. María is very energetic, and also she has a very distinct/split personality (Sort of Bi-Polar), she is always very happy or sad by a event no matter how big or small. She also forgets things very easily, and tends to forgive people indisputably, because of this.

I think María inside, sort of loves Matt, I think that is why she always is near Matt, like when he was in the jail. María is probably the only one with feelings that are positive towards Matt, other than Celia, in these first chapters. All of the other children try to influence María's view on Matt, they try to make her think Matt is some sort of evil creature that is like the stuff in myths they tell. María has a very independent view on Matt, and I think she is also very curious why people call him names, and that might be another reason why she is always near him.

In these first few chapters María doesn't have that much actions, until the last 2 or 3 chapters. I think Farmer wants to introduce María as the one person that can help Matt, sort of like a savior for Matt, like a kind of angel that helps people when they are going to die or are in a bad condition, or like the Virgin of Guadelupe. I think María is very interesting, because she sometimes hates Matt and other times she is very friendly, like when she was in the "Jail" with him and he told of scary stories like La Lorona; the weeping woman who drowned her children, and now makes the wind howling sound. She really hated Matt for that because she doesn't like scary stories and takes them very seriously. She was very friendly otherwise to Matt during that, since she brought him food and things to drink, when Rosa didn't want to provide food to him.