The Scorpion Project #2: Thoughts so Far

Now that I've read the first section (Youth: 0-6) and a little bit of the second section, I am able to make my first individual post about my thoughts on the novel. If you'd like to read a synopsis of the novel so you understand what I'm talking about, please follow this link.

The first thing I would like to talk about is the opium fields we learn about in Chapter 8. Tam Lin explains how the workers are slashing open pods to release the opium. My initial reaction was that the opium was a drug. The workers in the poppy fields, harvesting opium, could be working for El Patron. The reason why I thought this is because it is described in the Cast of Characters that El Patron is a "powerful drug lord". Now we can prove that part of the purpose of the Cast of Characters is to foreshadow events (I have a feeling the opium will play a strong role in the rest of the story) and also to provide information so we get a sense of the intentions of the characters. I think that El Patron is most likely the one who is running the opium operation, which leads me to a new question. Was his clone (Matt) created to run the fields when El Patron dies?

After making these inferences, I double-checked the definition of "opium" in the dictionary. A reddish-brown heavy-scented addictive drug prepared from the juice of the opium poppy, used as a narcotic and in medicine as an analgesic. This definition caused me to wonder why they were harvesting the opium and for what purpose was it to be used for. Do they use it, as the definition suggests, as an analgesic? Or is there a darker purpose for the drug?

Finally, I made some inferences about El Patron's character from this information and other chapters. In Chapter 6, we finally meet El Patron, and Matt is immediately drawn to him. This makes me interested in the relationship El Patron and Matt will develop. Furthermore, on page 70, Tam Lin compares El Patron to a tree; as in he made a choice to grow one way until his large, green leaves shadowed the entire forest and his branches became twisted. I found this very interesting. El Patron obviously has a dark side, and my guess is that he is ruthless when it comes to gaining power or scientific discovery. PAGE 82 SPOILER ALERT. This theory was tested when we found out that eejits are actually people with chips in their brains that cannot do anything without command. If El Patron is running this operation, than he obviously doesn't care if someone dies because they went without water from not hearing a command. SPOILER ALERT OVER. 

Thanks for reading my thoughts so far regarding the Scorpion Project! Have a great day! :)