The House of the Scorpion

The novel is set in a futuristic time when science, technology, and medicine are highly advanced. Despite the obvious wonder that surrounds the miracles explored in the text, the story’s events comment on the human and ethical costs of such advancements. Matt’s experiences as a clone examine the complexity of a clone’s existence. While a clone has all the characteristics of a human being, international law does not allow for the existence of multiples of one human. In addition, international law makes it mandatory for the minds of clones to be destroyed. Thus, any clones are classified as livestock, and the process of cloning itself is unjust to the cows that are sacrificed when clones are harvested. The definition of clones as nonpersons leads to society’s perception of clones as the lowest creatures. The novel presents Matt’s treatment as a clone as unjust by exploring his human habits, thoughts, and abilities. Just like humans, Matt is able to make choices and form his identity. Though MacGregor’s clone can be viewed as livestock, Matt’s comparison with him complicates his and other clone’s existences. If international law were to allow other clones to keep their intelligence, then defining them as livestock would become all the more difficult.

The ability to chip the minds of animals and humans to create eejits, or zombies, creates a modern technological slavery in which humans are controlled to the extent that they lose agency and identity. Eejits prove to be a gravely unethical and inhumane solution to that of illegal immigration, where both the governments of Aztlán and the United States seem to silently stand by as their citizens are forced into slavery and their lives are shortened. The purity of Opium’s maintained environment is in stark contrast to the chemical pollution of Aztlán. In Opium, the reader glimpses the dire consequences of such factories and development in the pollution surrounding the eejit pens. Similarly, the polluted Colorado River, the boneyard, and the emptied Gulf of California speak to the environmental impacts of the technological advancements of the time. These advancements seem to have little positive impact on the quality of people’s lives either in Aztlán or in the United States. A vast majority of people in both nations are evidently still poor, and citizens on both sides of the border attempt to escape to the other side in the false hope of a better life.