In the beginning of the book, while Matteo Alacran was being dragged to the big house, he saw a symbol of a scorpion on engraved on the outside wall. I think this was what the book was named after, since it is the big house, which could be the house of the scorpion. In the first round table discussion, I thought it might have been about a family ("house of" sometimes refers to a last name), so I searched Alacrán in google translate and it means scorpion in spanish. I believe that the the entire Alacrán family is probably living in the big house. The scorpion could still symbolize more than that, but that is all that I know so far. I do not know why they are called the scorpions, and I do not know if there is more meaning behind the scorpion than just that sign and the last name. There are a lot of people in the Alacrán family as shown in the family tree, and El Patrón is obviously a very powerful person since his clones mind was the only one not destroyed at harvesting. I still have not found out whether there is more to the scorpion than their last name, but I think that is at least part of the reason. There has not been much said about scorpions, and the only time that it is ever mentioned so far is in the title and on the big house. I am hoping to find more on this symbol, because I doubt that Farmer would have just called a book House of the Scorpion because of their last name; I think it goes deeper than that. It is possible that she is comparing the family with scorpions, that they are dangerous, no one can see them until after they sting, etc. but it could mean just about anything at this point.
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