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The book “The Lady with the Monster Tattoo” was written by the Swedish publisher Stieg Larsson. Lamentable as it is but it was published simply after the author’s death in 2004. Within some months after the posting it became the earth bestseller. It truly is noteworthy that initially in Swedish version it was called “The Males who hated Women”, but as you see the translator from Swedish to English decided to change it is title. And I consider it had not been in vain.
I doubt that the book would have become the world bestseller, if it had been published under such misogynistic title. And all in all is not it the very dramatic title “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”? Actually I encountered this book by accident about one year ago surfing American sites for some books to read. Then there were not those everybody’s fad and bandwagon for this novel as we can see today, in Russia it was not familiar to all the people, but became only after David Fincher had shot the film with the same name.
And I still vividly remember that I was just mesmerized exactly by this title and also by the red cover of the book on which a naked woman with a beautiful tattoo on her shoulder blade was depicted. So I hurriedly read all the readers’ reviews, not paying any attention to a pitiful handful of negative ones and decided then that sooner or later I would buy this book without any doubts. Finally, it so happened that I have bought not only one book, but the entire bundle, I mean “The Millennium” trilogy. And now after reading the first book I see that the original Swedish title “The Men who hated Women” is more proper, but nevertheless I like more the English one “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, as it is more enigmatic, it does not disclose a main theme of the novel. Well, actually it means nothing and this tattoo plays no role in the book.
One way or another but behind this meaningless title I have met a great heap of problems. And these problems are not made up out of whole cloth, they are really significant not only for Sweden but for the whole world nowadays. And on this essay I would like to enumerate all the themes I have managed to notice by reading the book. Firstly, I consider that violence is the main theme of the book. Violence runs through the entire book. Much of this violence is sexual. Every part of the novel begins with epigraphs giving us an idea about the state of the women in modern Sweden: “18% of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man”, “46% of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man”, “13% of the women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship”, “92% of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police”. Lisbeth Salander, the main female character of the book is regarded to be asocial and dangerous for the society, that is why she has been put under the guardianship.
Her guardian Bjurman has the total power over her, as he has taken control of all her honestly earned money. Bjurman understands that Salander is a perfect victim for him, because sooner or later she will need her money and she will come to him to get it. So he goes beyond his commission and subjects Lisbeth to sex, considering that nobody will believe her if she decides to tell about his assaults because she is regarded to be insane. The main villain of the book the magnate Martin Vanger kills his boredom raping women and massacring them as well as his father did when was alive. Martin thinks that nobody will miss immigrants from Eastern Europe, so their lives are worthless. Thus we see that people having power and money can do everything they want even in Sweden where we believe everything is hunky-dory and men and women have fully equal rights. Apart from sexual there is a great deal of physical and even mental violence in the novel.
Lisbeth Salander is very violent herself, she uses violent tools, such as a taser and a golf club to get revenge, she always has violent thoughts even toward the good guy journalist Mikael Blomkvist. But of course we can conclude that her life has made her such a woman. Secondly, the author in his novel reveals the problem of the incompetence and cowardice of investigative journalists. All of them are half-hearted to go against the stream, to say something that will not satisfy industry moguls. They even do not try to do it, on the contrary they try to please frauds, battling for their interests and writing complimentary articles about them. Mikael Blomkvist is the only one brave and competent guy not sucking up to big shots, doing money laundering and embezzlement of public funds. He is brave enough to disclose the true information about one of the most powerful tycoons.
Thirdly, Stieg Larsson, a leading expert on the antidemocratic right-wing extremist and Nazi organizations, brings to the surface the theme of hatred and Nazism. I was surprised to learn about the Nazi activity in Sweden before, during and after World World II. One of the brothers stops talking with his other brother only because the latter has married a Jewish woman. Is not it silly? Hence I would like to formulate the last problem, I have managed to find in the novel: can parents and society bring up a person dangerous for the society>Let me try to answer this question taking by way of example life of Martin Vanger. He was lifted in the unable to start family. Martin’s mother Isabella did not pay any awareness of her kids, she liked drinking and spending time with men, while his dad Gottfried was drunkard, rapist and great, he accustomed to rape his own kids since their very own puberty. This individual taught Martin to rape and slaughter women.
Gottfried himself have been raised inside the dysfunctional relatives, in his the child years he observed his dad Richard, the inveterate Fascista by the way, defeating his mother. So who is guilty that Martin gets pleasure simply by killing ladies? Where may be the root of most evils? As for me, therefore i assume that the genetics plays the major function, there was at first something wrong in Richard’s personality, that produced him the Nazi innovator, so Martin inherited this brutality from his grandpa. Besides, it had been nourished by the poor parental input. Well, I suppose it is just the moment to stop chatting on and in. I have stated everything I wanted to say. Basically it was certainly not among my aims to persuade you to check out this novel. You will discover no uncertainties that some individuals will find this book too protracted, over-cruel, bloody and sometimes meaningless.
Yes, in truth I started reading it twice, first of all it was very difficult for me to have a grasp from it; I assume it is because of numerous genuinely complicated financial details the writer in the beginning from the book goes into. But the second approach to this book was more successful: I began reading it and I wasn’t able to stop executing it. Regarding dozens of brutalities of the book, very well, I can declare they reflect the true situation in the world: a lot of women go through violent and cruel treatment; thousands of them go through rapes, and those those who have money and power they can do every thing they want and go unpunished. So this novel brings each one of these sharp cultural problems to the surface, for this reason I can say with the absolute confidence that it is one of the best books for the last 10 years. I i am really addicted to this series as I think the fact that Stephen Full recommends to read these ebooks does all of them even more credit rating.
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