Romi's Blog Response 1

Romi’s Blog Response

What are you wondering about? 

From reading the first few chapters I have been really intrigued about why people dislike the clones. Why would people make clones if they are useless? According to most of the characters in the book they refer to clones as “dirty animals” and other names which make me ponder at why we would even use these clones in the first place. I also wondered about why El Patròn would need  a clone like Matt, is it for his own amusement? What is he planning to do with matt in the future?  It also amazed me at how Rosa treated Matt, she treated him worse than most animals are treated. The thing that bothered me more about this was Matt wasn’t really ever rude to Rosa at all yet she basically tortured him, both physically and mentally.

Has anything struck you about this section?

 The way that people acted when Matt got injured. At first everyone was nice to him and helped him clean his wounds, then out of the blue they got so scared and horrified that they had to dump Matt on the grass because “He was bleeding on the sheets”. Why do they treat clones like this I wonder? It also  made me feel outraged when Rosa put Matt in the chicken coup and made him stay there. Why did Rosa treat matt so inhumanely? Maybe Rosa had a bad experience with a clone in the past and that is why she treats matt as if he isn’t worth anything.  I think that as the story progresses people will start respecting matt more. I also think Matt may escape the country of Opium when he is older and start a new life somewhere else, maybe Matt does something to make El Patron mad and needs to escape later on.

Why is Farmer making the choices that she is in this first section?

I believe that farmer makes choices in the first section based on how she wants to introduce the characters.  For example she shows matt as a kid who is socially awkward, because he hasn’t been out in public and hasn’t really talked to anybody other than Celia. Farmer also hints that Celia is hiding something from matt, or hiding matt from something because she tells him that there are monsters and other un-desirable things in the outside world. Celia takes even more drastic precautions to keep Matt from the outside world by barring the windows and doors, and tells Matt never to talk to anyone outside the house. This is obviously set up by Farmer to show that there is something in the world that Matt is being hidden from. Later in the section she shows how Matts psychology changed when he is imprisoned by Rosa and is treated dreadfully by everyone else in the house. It shows how he goes from a happy, shy, and innocent little boy to a depressed child who is deprived from basic needs. These choices really show how Matt reacts to his surroundings and it shows how he thinks about the world around him.