The House of the Scorpion: Connections Real World Issues

Hello everyone so today I am going to be talking about connections from The House of the Scorpion to issues in the real world. So I started flipping through my notes that I took throughout the reading, and came across a note on page 279 about pollution. I decided to go a bit deeper into this because I think that it's a huge issue that needs to be dealt with.

This is what I wrote in my book: Why? <why does the air smell>  Pollution? Oh wait... it was Fidelito... Wait, just kidding. As you can tell, my note was a bit of rambling, and I was quite confused on what it really was. In fact, I still am a bit confused, but after looking into the issue of pollution in Mexico, I think that it is quite plausible. Click here to view the article that I read and looked over for information on May 12th, 2013.

"As the vehicle population has reached more than 700 million, numerous cites experiencing rapid industrialization started to suffer from air pollution." - Outline of Article

"Some of them [cities in Mexico] reduced the air pollution level; however there are still some that are considered to be the most polluted cities in the world." - Outline of Article

These two statements combined really just stuck out to me. It explains why, in The House of the Scorpion, we come across this issue. This book is set in the future, and as you can imagine, this problem would be much worse as more vehicles are bought and used by billions of people. In the book we come across horrid scents of vomit and rotting fish (Farmer 279), which could have easily be caused by pollution. The story could have turned out differently without these details. Maybe Fidelito would have been accepted better, or the girls at the convent wouldn't feel so badly for Matt and his comrades. This could of resulted in less allies.

"What caused the problem: Air pollution is mainly caused by vehicles." - Background of Article

This is where we come in. Now that we know what causes most pollution, we can act on it. If we can stop using vehicles as much we can stop this problem and face a different future. If pollution had stopped, maybe Matt would have been happier with the place that he was staying at, and not felt as much need to escape.

Pollution is a growing problem that needs to be dealt with. We see evidence of this, even in fictional stories such as The House of the Scorpion. What do you think of this issue? Comment below, and happy reading.