The House of the Scorpion Literary Elements

The House of the Scorpion Literary Elements

Genre

Dystopic and scientific novel

Setting and Context

Mexico and America

Narrator and Point of View

Third-person narrator

Tone and Mood

Daunting, tussling, frenzy, and scientific

Protagonist and Antagonist

Matt - protagonist. El Patron - antagonist.

Major Conflict

Matt's quest to survive, outlive El Patron and bring down El Patron's damaging system of drugs.

Climax

El-Patron’s unprecedented demise.

Foreshadowing

The attributes and preferences of the clones are foreshadowed in “In the Beginning.”

Understatement

N/A

Allusions

Nancy Farmer alludes to science (cloning). Opium is an overt allusion to the drug/opium crisis in America and Mexico.

Religious allusions to Catholicism such as “a huge crucifix and a picture of our Lord Jesus with his heart pierced by five swords.”

Imagery

Poppy fields are indicative of the predominant economic engagement which is cultivating opium; “He’d (Matt) looked out the window where fields of white poppies stretched all the way to the shadowy hills.”

Paradox

N/A

Parallelism

Commencing sentences with the name ‘Matt’ creates a parallel structure that makes Matt the central player in the plot.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

Cells denote life. ‘Mi vida’ refers to my life.

Personification

Cows are personified because they are used to grow human embryos: “Were they aware of the children growing in their wombs.”

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