REVIEW - The Girl with the dragon tatto: an analysis of fiction to the real world*

LARSSON, S. Os homens que não amavam as mulheres. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2011.

The novel: “The Girl with the dragon tattoo” (2005), by Stieg Larsson, shows a modern and inexperienced couple of detectives: Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. Mikael is a succesful economic journalist and Millennium magazine owner. Lisbeth is a problematic and different girl. The novel also shows a serie of crimes that happen in Swedish society such as rapes and corruption.

The main story takes place in Swedish, where a great mystery haunts the Vanger Family, a very influential and importante family of industrial environment, but full of discord and secrets. The great mystery is Harriet’s disappearance. The head of the family, Henrik Vanger, all birth receives a boxe with, but no one knows who sent it, what is more disturbing. He had been trying to find out who sends the boxe for 40 years.

Parallel to this we have the drama faced by Mikael. After suffering a defeat in court, he sees hus career be destroyed. So, he decides to make a break and get some time free, he left the magazine and moved to his summer cabin. Stieg Larsson shows Mikael as a strong and focused man, moved by the spirit of truth and justice, a typical journalist. On the other side of the plot, we have Lisbeth Salander, a girl totally out of social standards, who works at a security agency, she is a brialliant hacker, whose the ultimate goal is to discover everything about a person.

With the help of Lisbeth, Henrik can find Mikael and hires him to solve the Harriet’s disappearance. Although Mikael is not a true detective he accepts this work, because he needs Henrik’s help. If we compare Super Blomkvist with other classical detectives, we can observe some diferences: (1) he does not use logical reasoning; (2) he is not a person focused on small details and (3) he does not fight very well.

First of all, Lisbeth is described as a strange person, introverted, socially limited, lack of empathy, egocentric, psycopathic behaviour and anti-social, collaboration and learning difficulties.”. The author shows Salander as a weak and fagile person, who has psychological problems. But, over the story she grows too much.

Blomkvist was hired to investigate Harriet’s disappearance. Henrik’s niece. She disappeared 40 years ago without leaving obvious clues. Many investigations had been made since the disappearance but nothing concrete had been found. The main suspects are themsleves members of the Vanger family. Not to call their attention Mikael uses the pretext of writing a family biography, so that he can collect the information without raising suspicion.

As an investigative method, he examined the old surveys and Henrik’s daily annotations, retraced the last steps taken by Harriet, he talked to family members to find a possible enemy, but nothing has been found. After much reading  he concluded that he did not find anything.

After that, he uses Lisbeth’s investigative skills. They found a picture of the day of disappearance, in which Harriet appears scared. After carefully examining it they discovered why Harriet was  scared in the picture. As the investigation advance many people were not satisfied and started to hinder the of the new detectives.

At this point of the plot, Lisbeth ceases to be a strange and troubled woman she was. She is now a very importante piece of this story. In the bigining of the plot, she is na orphan, very thin and has na unconventional appearance. Now we can see a strong and very smart woman, with a restless mind.

Parallel to the investigation, other crimes are revealed. These crimes are linked directly to the central mystery of the book. Mikael and Lisbeth found that the one responsible for Henrik niece’s disappearance is Harriet’s brother, Martin Vanger, the current diretor of the Vanger companies. They also discovered that Martin, has been klling women in various places of Suécia, following the footsteps of his father. After that Discovery, Mikael was really in trouble, because Martin got angry and tried to kill Mikael. He confesses all crimes and how they were made. At this moment, Lisbeth arrived, hit Martin with stick and helped Mikael to scape. They also discovered that Harriet had been raped by her father.

After all this, Lisbeth clipped Anitta’s phone and discovered that she had helped Harriet during all this time, even sent flowers to Henrik. They met Harriet in Australia and she explained that she fled because she had killed her father to got rido f the rapes and because her brother wanted to keep doind what his father did to her.

In this detective novel, we have a type of mixture: the author brings some real facts to his story such as rape, femicide and corruption. The book also brings characteristics of the classical detective stories. We have detectives, suspects, victim, clues, red-herrings and a resolution.

“The girl with the dragon tattoo”, is a morden detective story, we can say that, because from the moment that the author puts a very different character as big story’s riddle and some unusual elements.

Lisbeth Salander is an amazing character, whose growth while the plot happens and the rest of the trilogy. She is marked by events that occurred in her life, At first sight she is small, weak and unimportant. Even with her scary appearance and her emotional problems, she is very smart, strong and determined. She has a high teem intelligence and a quick thinking. She is not a fragile person anymore.

A really interesting thing in this novel is the fact that women appears as something helpless. First, we have Harriet: a women fragile who was raped by her father. Second, we have many murdered women (they were killed inhumanely) and finally, Lisbeth: a problematic woman and unimportant. But, Lisbeth breaks this weakness and shows how powerful she is.

*Trabalho realizado para a disciplina de Literatura de Língua Inglesa 3