Genre
Dystopic and scientific novel
Setting and Context
Mexico and America
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narrator
Tone and Mood
Daunting, tussling, frenzy, and scientific
Protagonist and Antagonist
Matt - protagonist. El Patron - antagonist.
Major Conflict
Matt's quest to survive, outlive El Patron and bring down El Patron's damaging system of drugs.
Climax
El-Patron’s unprecedented demise.
Foreshadowing
The attributes and preferences of the clones are foreshadowed in “In the Beginning.”
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
Nancy Farmer alludes to science (cloning). Opium is an overt allusion to the drug/opium crisis in America and Mexico.
Religious allusions to Catholicism such as “a huge crucifix and a picture of our Lord Jesus with his heart pierced by five swords.”
Imagery
Poppy fields are indicative of the predominant economic engagement which is cultivating opium; “He’d (Matt) looked out the window where fields of white poppies stretched all the way to the shadowy hills.”
Paradox
N/A
Parallelism
Commencing sentences with the name ‘Matt’ creates a parallel structure that makes Matt the central player in the plot.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Cells denote life. ‘Mi vida’ refers to my life.
Personification
Cows are personified because they are used to grow human embryos: “Were they aware of the children growing in their wombs.”
