The House of the Scorpion takes the concept of human cloning and addresses all of the moral and spiritual implications that come with it, including how clones would be treated in society and how they would be regarded in terms of having a soul. The debate, which is at this point just a theoretical discussion, is reality in this novel, and having a clone as the main character brings it to the forefront. Matt is a real human being with real emotions and concerns, yet he is treated like an animal or a walking collection of donor organs. These issues, along with laws concerning the status of clones in society, are all addressed.

El Patron and others like him used cloning to greatly extend the length of their lives. Whether this is beneficial or good—or even moral—is an issue in the book. Another member of the family, El Viejo, has chosen to not use clones to extend his life, and many members of the household respect him for that choice. The quality of life that El Patron lives is debatable, and he remains alive seemingly only to garner more power and fear from others.

The country of Opium is established purely on its drug trade, and El Patron's power comes through his career distribution of narcotics. Even though he is presented in a positive light through Matt's love for him, the fear, violence, and unethical means he uses to control his empire reflect poorly on the establishment of drug trafficking. Humans are turned into slaves and intimidation and bullying reign supreme in addition to the argument that drug trafficking is dishonorable or questionable at best. It is not only El Patron and his kingdom that are corrupted by drugs; the Keepers are presented as power-mongering hypocrites who use slave labor to cover their own drug-trafficking schemes. In the end, both of these establishments are taken down, and the book ends happily as a result.

True friends look on the inner heart, and this moral is seen through the people that look beyond Matt's status as a clone and befriend him and care for him. Celia and Tam Lin, his adult caretakers, treat him as an equal-value human and show him quite a bit of love and concern. Tam Lin educates Matt in a way that will eventually help him to function on his own. Both Celia and Tam Lin risk their lives to help him escape. Their friendship is what sustains Matt in a household where he is considered no more than an abomination. Maria, too, shows Matt friendship, ignoring her orders to stay away from him, and they develop a special relationship that eventually leads Matt to total freedom, citizenship, and the destruction of the infamous practices of the drug traders that have kept him imprisoned. Friendship is the tie that reassures Matt he is a true human being worth being loved.

The novel presents an assortment of different people who, on the outside, appear to be successful, happy, and influential individuals. However, if you look more deeply, their characters are fatally flawed and twisted with vice and greed. Farmer asserts, through the good people in this book, that true character comes by making the right decisions even when it is hard and by remaining exempt from the corrupting and tainting influences of power and wealth. Character is truly shown in the way that we treat other people—do we build them up, as Matt tries to do with his friends, or tear them down and use fear to manipulate them, as El Patron does? Even though Matt...

Even though the society presented in the novel is technologically advanced, it presents as many problems as it solves. Inside the country of Opium, technology is used to cruelly abuse human beings by turning them into animals, creating clones whose sole purpose is to provide organ transplants, and controlling and keeping enemies and friends trapped within the confines of the kingdom. Outside Opium, in Aztlan, technology has made the quality of life much better for some, but it has increased the gap between the incredibly poor and incredibly rich. Better technology and transportation has also increased the ease and access of the drug traders, expanding their reach beyond regional influences to worldwide domination. Despite the amazing advances in technology that could potentially better the human race, it seems that humanity itself has the same problems and uses the technology only to facilitate its forays into power mongering and greed.