Last year, I told someone on an email that the Millennium series (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest) did to contemporary literature what Inception did to films that year. It changed everything. Well… almost everything! I don’t want to sound like a hysterical fan… that person never wrote back to me.
This month I was browsing trough my small collection, wondering what to read and caught my eyes staring at the cover of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (my favorite of the three) I read it in two days. 🙂 Yes! Again.
In my previous post, where I wrote about Steig Larsson and how incredible he was as a writer, and now he is no longer with us… it is a terrible loss. I also mentioned how much I liked the series, but never really said the main reason why. In two words; Lisbeth Salander, to whom I will referred as Slander since it is the name I have given her and can’t seemed to erase from my head.
What can we say about one of the most complex characters ever written? Yet, it is so simple to understand her, thanks to the fact that we can read her thoughts, evidently. So, who is Slander? Even when she is not the common victim, is she a character that needs our pity in order to like her? No, and this is her beauty. What Larsson did, was make somebody completely unlikable by society, and make us (the reader) fall in love with her. If we were to meet someone as Slander, we would not think twice before keeping considerable distance from the person. Nobody has time to understand other people. This is sad, but the truth.
I read this fiction book about a girl who is not only misunderstood but also rejected, yet managed to make people look at her and wonder; and suddenly I have this clear understanding of many things about myself I have doubted for years.
Whoever tells you life is easy, is lying to you (and whoever tells you that? I must be smoking something!) Let me preach to the quire for just one second. Nothing good is ever easy, things are supposed to be difficult so that we can appreciate them more. This applies to everything, love, work, friendship… you know, life! (I think we all know that… I hope) Now, how much difficult should they be? One of my many unanswered questions. But, going back to Lisbeth, I can’t stop thinking how cruel can a human be, to make the life of another human as shitty and miserable as the life of Lisbeth. And not just one person, but many of us. How selfish we are that we cannot sacrifice a little to try and understand others, and how this can affect a person entirely.
I knew all about these things, but when I read the series, I realized I did not know the magnitude of the problem. To be seen as something you are not, is not that simple. You will never say again –without seriously thinking about it- how you do not care what others see you as.
And this is one thing -among many and may be the least apparent- Larsson brings out to light in his book trough Lisbeth’s life. Why is it that we are told not to care what people think of us? By not caring what others think of us, aren’t we also, slowly, very slowly, not caring about what we think of others? And, isn’t this another way to be indifferent to each other problems and hurts? I know is not black and white, blah, blah, blah… but I was just brainstorming… don’t mind me.
This time I won’t be reading the second book, nor the third, I know what happens and I think is time for me to put it to rest. My Slander, until we meet again…
Sine Cera 