Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

National Honor Book/2003 Newbery Honor Book/Printz Honor Book

Ratings Explanation

Language:  Two of the words of profanity used throughout the book mean nothing to us, but are future words of profanity.  “Crotting” which means anything to do with “eejits”.  The other,”Eejits” are people, clones or animals who are injected with a drug that blunts their intelligence or have an implant in their brain.  They are not considered human.  They can do repetitive tasks, but cannot think for themselves.  ie.)If the eejits are not told to drink water, they will die of thirst.  There are minimal references to the Country of Opium as hell.

Violence:  Matt as a six year old child breaks a glass window and climbs out.  Matt’s foot is sliced open.  He is taken to the Alacran Mansion, where he is gently cared for until they realize he is a clone.  Matt is then thrown out of the house onto the lawn and left for the day until he is discovered to be El Patron’s clone.  Matt is then locked up.  There is no bathroom.  He tries to urinate quietly and the bucket tips over.  Rosa threatens to kill Matt.  Rosa takes his clothes, the bathroom bucket and slowly starves Matt.  Rosa has sawdust thrown into the room – deep litter.  Matt throws an orange at Tom’s face.  Tom shoots Matt with a pea shooter.  Rosa is turned into an eejit when Matt is found malnourished with a skin condition.  Matt and the bodyguard, Tam Lin come upon a dead man lying in the field, a worker, who died of thirst.  The eejit is left in the field like a piece of trash.  Tom unsuccessfully tries to drown Maria’s dog, Furball.  Tom uses laudunum, which is opium dissolved in alcohol to kill Furball.  Furball’s death is blamed on Matt.  Tom takes Maria and Matt to the estate’s hospital where McGregor’s clone is strapped to a bed, writhing in pain.  His eyes and liver have been transplanted.  When the eejits die, they are turned into compost to fertilize the opium fields.  Felicia unleashes a venomous tirade to Tom how she wants to kill Matt.  Matt discovers the eejit pens, where they sleep in filth.  The eejits are exposed to carbon dioxide from the wastelands on still nights and are commanded to sleep in the fields, so they don’t die.  The army of bodyguards consists of wanted international criminals.  Tam Lin, El Patron’s personal bodyguard, was a Scottish Nationalist who accidentally blew up twenty kids on a school bus, instead of the Prime Minister and Prince Charlie in London.  Matt tries to escape when El Patron has a heart attack and needs a new heart.  Matt is tackled by a guard and strapped to a bed.  Matt is poisoned by Celia with foxglove and arsenic to make his heart too unstable to transplant – which saves his life.  Matt barely escapes the Farm Patrol into Aztlanos, formerly Mexico.  Fidelito recounts his parents being killed by the Farm Patrol’s stun guns.  The orphans are beaten for not producing enough each day.  They are fed plankton feed, which makes the boys sick and gives them skin conditions.  The Keepers are drug addicts and traffickers of laudunum.  Matt is beaten by a keeper and he and Chacho are thrown into the boneyard to die.  El Patron dies and determines that a toast to him be made at the wake with a special wine he has saved for the occasion.  The wine is poisoned and kills everyone but Tam Lin, Mr. Ortega, and Celia who decided not to toast the old man.  They are all buried with El Patron.  El Patron worshipped the Pharoahs of old, who were buried with their possessions.

Sexuality:  Tom, a vicious boy, who torments Matt, is the son of a competing drug lord, MacGregor.  While Tom’s mother, Felicia, was married to El Patron’s great-grandson.  Felicia ran off with Macregor, only it didn’t work out because El Patron doesn’t like people taking his possessions.  El Patron had Felicia brought back to the Alacran Estate.  However, Felicia’s husband, Mr. Alacran, did not want Felicia back.  El Patron didn’t care.  Felicia was the Property of El Patron.  Rosa has a lover, Willum the Chief Doctor for the Alacran Household.  Maria, the young daughter of Senator Mendoza sneaks food to Matt and spends the night in the locked room.

Adult Themes:  Human beings are cloned for transplants, or to be workers in the poppy fields. The minds of the clones are destroyed at birth.  The coyotes who smuggle Mexicans into the U.S. and vice versa lead the illegals straight to the Farm Patrol in the country of Opium, where they are injected and turned into eejits.  The eejits are essentially slaves to the Country of Opium.  The boys in Aztlanos are all orphans of parents who have been turned into eejits, while searching for a better life in the U.S. or Aztlanos.  The orphans are kept as slave workers by the Border Patrol in Aztlanos.

Synopsis

One hundred years from now, Matteo Alacran’ will be harvested.  Matteo is a clone of El Patron, a powerful drug lord.  El Patron is the undisputed ruler of a new country called Opium, which lies on a narrow strip of land between what was once Mexico and the United States.  Matt’s first cells grew and divided in a petri dish.  The cells were then placed into the womb of a cow, where Matt grew from a fetus into a baby.  Matt is now like any other boy, except those in Opium do not consider him human.  He is considered a monster, an “eejit”.  Celia, a cook for El Patron, cares for Matt.  El Patron loves Matt, because Matt is El Patron.  In fact, Matt is the eighth El Patron clone to be born.  The other seven have been sacrificed for El Patron.  Their youthful organs transplanted into El Patron to enable him to live for nearly a century and a half.

Matt struggles to understand his existence.  El Patron lavishes a privately tutored education upon Matt.  Matt’s perspective of the world changes as he sees the cruel reality of Opium.  Matt is continually threatened by the evil, power-hungry family, friends and army of bodyguards who surround El Patron and his amassed property.  They are all El Patron’s property.  Matt’s only chance of survival is to escape from the Alacran Estate in Opium.  His escape from Alacran is no guarantee of freedom.  Matt discovers his intense desire to live as he confronts adversity.

Ironically, the day I began reading this book, I was stung by a scorpion hiding in the sheets of my bed as I drifted off to sleep – one of the perils of living in a desert.  Farmer’s plot was innovative and intense.  This is one of the most powerful and thought-provoking books I have read.  The story is a coming-of-age story that weaves today’s ethical, scientific, political and socioeconomic issues into an amazing tapestry that becomes a powerful story of survival.

©2009 The Literate Mother