Analysis Of Stieg Larsson's Novel 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'

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Stieg Larsson’s novel, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, is an intense thriller that concentrates on the systematic violence against women in Sweden. The original Swedish title translated to Men Who Hate Women, the story revolves around solving the forty-year-old disappearance of Harriet Vanger. While looking into what seemed as a murder, Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist, and research assistant, Lisbeth Salander, began to uncover a series of violent murders of women from the past and find that this string of attacks were linked to Harriet’s disappearance. Outside of solving the mystery, Salander was a victim herself of physical and psychological violence, adding another aspect and point of view of a victim and explains her thoughts and actions of how she takes “justice” in her own hands. Apart from specific scenes, the novel is split into four parts, each with a epigraph saying a statistic about violence and sexual harassment against women in Sweden: an unequivocal comment on Larsson’s general vision that there is a problem with violence towards women. As the story progresses and Blomkvist begins …show more content…
It is suggested that the main character, Mikael Blomkvist, is Larsson’s adaption of himself and the sole focus on the systematic violence originate from Larsson’s own personal experience and his role as an activist. The role of violence in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo revolves around the crimes and violence against women in Sweden and speaks to the warped philosophies and failure of Swedish law enforcement to prevent the systematic violence that surrounds the culture. Larsson takes a personal approach in using the theme and scenes of violence as a personal commentary on Swedish society, drawing from the authenticity of the issue and generating fictional characters that fit the persona of that

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